


so give me a line and take me home

by canardroublard



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Angst, Cold War, Espionage, Eventual Happy Ending, Mentions of Violence, Multi, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, like we're talking years, other relationships but ot3 is the endgame
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:34:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 43,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25110082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canardroublard/pseuds/canardroublard
Summary: There was no real warning.(in retrospect, it was hard to say whether that made it better or worse.)"Lack of funding," Waverly explained, adding some things about "gave it your all," and "not your fault," and "it's been a good year."[Or, U.N.C.L.E. ends, but life still goes on]
Relationships: Illya Kuryakin/Napoleon Solo/Gaby Teller
Comments: 41
Kudos: 76





	1. 1964 - 1966

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for warnings about events in Indonesia in 1965/66

### 1964 - July

There was no real warning.

(in retrospect, it was hard to say whether that made it better or worse.)

"Lack of funding," Waverly explained, adding some things about "gave it your all," and "not your fault," and "it's been a good year."

None of them were fully listening by that point. But Illya, forever the _good_ one who did the things he should, asked what would happen next.

(Illya's _goodness_ and _shouldness_ were things that the other two would come to resent a little. But not yet. Later.)

What happened next, it turned out, was simple. C.I.A., K.G.B., and Gaby would follow Waverly to M.I.6.

"Like it never happened," Waverly quipped.

Gaby stood up. Lethally quiet. Then she stormed out, the air crackling in her wake. No one dared call her back.

* * *

In a perfect world that would've been the night when they all set aside doubts and fears and shames, and came together. Finally acknowledged the thrumming of electricity between all three of them.

In reality Gaby was still silent, unapproachable as a simmering volcano. She picked a fight with whoever was closest, drank too much, and passed out on the sofa.

Solo and Illya argued. In mere minutes, words poured out which would take years to undo. Then they retreated to separate ends of the safehouse. Alone.

* * *

When they woke Gaby was already gone.

No note.

(if there were ever one of them to run, it was always going to be her)

### 1964 - December

The snow in Moscow was thick that year, with a pebbled glaze of ice on top, remnants of a slight thaw and immediate refreeze courtesy of the unusually warm day yesterday. The streets were icy despite some attempts to improve them with sand and gravel, making Illya shuffle like an old man across Lubyanka Square, wanting a walk after a long day cooped up in the overcrowded K.G.B. headquarters.

December twenty-fifth meant nothing to Illya. Even if he weren't an atheist, the Russian church days were different from those in the West, the twenty-fifth passing unremarked, just one day closer to New Year's, the big winter holiday. Yet his thoughts kept tugging towards his last December twenty-fifth; the one he'd spent with his partn–

(No, not his partners anymore.)

–with Gaby and Solo. Deep undercover, hunting arms dealers working out of Copenhagen. Solo had gotten them both little gifts–for Gaby, a pair of handsome leather driving gloves, for Illya, some better lockpicks–and was unoffended by their lack of reciprocation. They'd found a moment of peace, setting aside the stress of their job, just enjoying each other's company, ending up sprawled on the safehouse couch together, Illya in the middle with his partners warm on either side. Solo had bemoaned their meagre celebration, explaining for a curious Gaby how Christmas _should_ be, with family and food and the warmth of a fire, but it was the best Christmas Illya had ever had. That it was his first Christmas didn't, in his opinion, detract from the sentiment.

The looming clouds finally opened up. Instead of fluffy snow, Illya was pelted in the face with ice pellets, stinging his cheeks as he swore and tugged his scarf up to cover his nose. He did an about-face, scrapping his plans of going for a walk in favour of heading for the metro, which would no doubt be stuffed to bursting with commuters at this hour, late in the afternoon. He'd have to stand all the way.

In an absurd, naive whim, he hoped Gaby and Solo were celebrating together now. He may have been forbidden from any contact, but their countries were allies, they were free to see each other all they liked, and surely they would take advantage of that. How could they not?

### 1965 - June

Napoleon didn't know why he was in Yugoslavia. Oh sure, he understood his mission well enough—make government contacts, shuttle funds to pro-American groups—but between the ostensibly non-aligned country's recent coziness with Moscow and the fact that he didn't speak any of the languages, the whole thing seemed ill-conceived and more than a little futile. Still, it was neither the first nor, he had no doubt, the last time Sanders would loan him out to a C.I.A. station far away enough from D.C. that Napoleon couldn't pester him too much for a while, which Napoleon intended to take advantage of by prolonging his stay as much as possible. Belgrade was nice enough as far as communist cities went; the old city had recovered well from all the bombing of the last war and now brimmed with cafés which offered endless meeting places for his work. The new city on the far bank of the rivers was rising rapidly with architecture a bit less dreary than the Soviet taste for brutalism. It was too hot in June for comfort when wearing a suit, but Napoleon made peace with sweating a bit in the day and enjoying the cooler evenings.

The nights, however, brought their own challenges.

There were Russian agents everywhere in Belgrade. Some painfully obvious, others less so. The C.I.A. station chief here seemed blasé about their presence, writing it off as inevitable and telling Napoleon to stop worrying and do his job, which was fine in the daytime when the city was busy enough to make any overt violence untenable. At night, though, Napoleon couldn't shake the prickling on the back of his neck. He was being watched, which itself was not unexpected, but the intensity and persistence of the surveillance was faintly unnerving. Just because he didn't think the K.G.B. would be bold enough to murder him here, didn't mean he wanted to test that hunch. And still, when he brought his concerns to the station chief, nothing. Typical.

Three weeks in, Napoleon had a different sort of hunch confirmed. The station chief really didn't give a damn about the K.G.B. agents stalking him. That was the only explanation for how he found himself panting for breath in some back alley behind a street market, staring down the barrel of a pistol at two oh-so-familiar blue eyes.

It was the third time Napoleon had confronted an Illya with orders to kill him. The last time, so long ago in Rome, the situation had diffused long before they got this far, letting him later convince himself that Illya wouldn’t have really done it; that Peril couldn’t, deep down, pull the trigger.

Illya didn't even flinch. Didn't waver. In a moment of searing, nauseating clarity, Napoleon became aware that he'd profoundly underestimated Illya for the sake of his own comforting misbelief. Illya would kill him. Illya was about to kill him.

"Peril..." Napoleon made a policy of never begging for anything, but Illya had a way of making his 'nevers' seem less definitive.

Illya blinked. The muzzle of his gun drifted down, just an inch.

(Napoleon did not yet know this, but he had a similar effect on Illya's 'nevers'.)

Footsteps began thudding towards them on the cobblestones, around the corner to Napoleon's left. He was almost out of time. He stared into Illya's eyes with a silent plea. The gun inched down again. Then a sudden shout from behind Illya, in Russian, and before Napoleon had a chance to blink Illya's gun was aimed right at his heart again. This was it. As everything in Napoleon's brain started to scream, Illya opened his mouth.

" _Run._ "

For one of the first times in his life Napoleon obeyed an order without question. He ran.

* * *

Napoleon should have been feeling something. He knew that. He was alive—which had not been a given less than two hours ago and therefore which should have been worth celebrating—but here he was, sitting alone in a hotel room which stank of mould and mildew, draining a bottle of cheap Yugoslavian wine too quickly to pretend even to himself that he wasn't drinking with the sole purpose of getting drunk, and he felt nothing. Other than faintly buzzed. But it wasn't even a pleasant sensation now, it just gave him a headache and made him overly aware of how pathetic he had become.

A knock at the door. And not his handler's knock. Heaving himself upright, Napoleon palmed his sidearm as he crept to gaze through the peephole. Then he froze.

"Cowboy, I know you're in there. It's just me, alone, I promise. Hurry up, if I am seen here..."

Napoleon screwed up his eyes and rested his forehead against the door. Then he pulled back to flip open the chain.

"You tried to shoot me."

Illya twitched as if he'd never expected Napoleon to actually open the door. Then he frowned. "No I didn't."

For all the ways Napoleon had imagined seeing Illya again after over a year, the sheer absurdity of their first conversation being a debate over whether or not Illya, who had _tried to shoot him_ , had tried to shoot him was so bizarre that Napoleon stood in flabbergasted wordlessness for two full seconds.

"Yes, you did."

"No, I didn't. " Illya's expression turned irritated, as if Napoleon were being deliberately obtuse. "My handlers were there." Then, when Napoleon just kept staring at him. "So I didn't try to shoot you. I tried to pretend to shoot you, but miss on purpose. And I succeeded. You're welcome," he added sarcastically as Napoleon's silence continued. "Can I come in?"

"I'm too fucking drunk to deal with this. Or not enough," Napoleon muttered, but he stepped aside. "No offense, Peril," he began after he'd shut the door behind Illya, "but this has been just about one of the worst goddamn days of my life, which is quite an accomplishment considering the hell that was the army and the other hell that's been the C.I.A., so if you're just here to debate semantics about who tried to shoot who–which was you, for the record, you tried to shoot me–can you just get it over with so I can finish getting drunk in peace?"

"I just wanted..." The pause Illya took then was long enough that he obviously reconsidered whatever he'd been about to say. "How is Gaby?"

Of course. Napoleon sighed. He should have known better. Of course this was never about Illya wanting to see _him_. No, it was about Gaby, like everything with Illya.

"How should I know?" He circled away to resituate himself at the dented table in the corner, retrieving his wine bottle. "Last time I saw her was when she was passed out on the sofa, before she ditched us and ran away. Same as you."

Illya's face contracted. "You haven't seen her? At all?"

"Nope." He held out the wine in Illya's general direction, attempting to smoothly slide out the next chair with his knee but misjudging its weight and sending it clattering a foot to the right. "Look, you hovering like some disapproving giraffe isn't helping my mood at all. Sit down already."

Illya sat.

* * *

All attempts at small talk quickly petered out. Their entire lives were classified to each other. Illya gamely fumbled along with personal anecdotes so censored that they lost any real coherence, but gave up after a few minutes. Napoleon kept drinking. Surprisingly, Illya joined him. They polished off the wine together, migrated to the sofa, and Napoleon dug out the bottle of vodka he'd meant to save until tomorrow.

"With..." Illya broke a long silence but checked himself, rolling his lips together. "What happened with you and Gaby?"

Napoleon sighed. "What do you mean?" He knew what Illya meant.

"As time went on you two..." Illya held his hands out in front of him, sandwiched together, then peeled them apart.

"You don't have to be friends with your coworkers."

"But you _were_ her friend. At first."

"I wouldn't put it that–I mean, I guess." Even with a year's time to consider all that had happened, Napoleon still didn't know how to reckon with the slow crumbling of his relationship with Gaby, something that had started so close yet ended with them as two moons orbiting Illya, trying to reel him closer to themselves in alternating tides, only occasionally tugging on each other's gravity. He glanced away from Illya, feeling exposed. "It wasn't...Sometimes things just don't work out."

It was a flimsy answer and the slight dip of Illya's brows hinted that he'd clocked its shabbiness, but he was polite enough, for once, not to interrogate further. Napoleon passed the vodka over, received with a grunt of gratitude by Illya, whose leg relaxed, his knee brushing Napoleon's.

"Do you get lonely?"

Napoleon nearly shot back some retort about why Illya wanted to play twenty questions, but was stopped by the hint of sincere longing in his words.

"Yeah," he said instead. "This job, it's..."

"Hard to talk to people. And in Moscow everyone is an informer, so I can never talk freely. For...for the first few months after U.N.C.L.E., I would see something in shop window and think 'oh, I should tell Cowboy about this' or 'Gaby would like that', but then I remembered that I couldn't..." That longing of Illya's turned darker, towards despair. "I might never see her again. And you, if I see you I have to kill you. If I get caught here _I_ will be killed. Enemies. Forever."

"Maybe," Napoleon conceded, knowing an attempted lie wouldn't do anyone any good, not when they both understood all too well the reality of their situation. "But I'm not your enemy right now. We're just two people. Having a drink."

Illya stared at him, eyes clear and wide, and _God_ , Napoleon had almost forgotten just what those eyes could do to him. Illya's knee was still pressed into his, warm, solid, and Napoleon had a fleeting thought, maybe, just maybe, this was it. Maybe those times when he'd tried to convince himself there was something more than friendship in Illya's smiles, he hadn't gotten it as wrong as he'd thought when he later kicked himself as Illya turned his adoring gaze on Gaby.

The first brush of Illya's lips was cautious, barely there before he flitted away again, leaving Napoleon fighting not to chase after him when he pulled back. Though he expected Illya to stumble over himself, to panic and run, Illya didn't turn away. He just stared.

"Is this–?" Illya whispered.

"Yeah." Napoleon swallowed. "Yeah, it's...You sure?"

With an earnest nod, ever so slight, Illya glanced down at his own hands, resting on his lap. "I've had a year to think about all the things I regret not doing while the three of us were together." When he looked up again the longing was so open in Illya's eyes that Napoleon stopped breathing. He wasn't strong enough to question Illya a second time.

It should've turned into a frantic fumble. Desperation fuelled by the certainty that they'd never have this chance again. Yet Napoleon found himself slowing down to focus on the details; the way Peril let out a soft whine when Napoleon nipped under the angle of his jaw, the way Illya stole the breath from him with kisses far too deep, too tender, the cautious, gorgeous little smile Illya made when he broke away long enough to tug Napoleon over to the bed.

Afterwards Napoleon didn't mean to fall asleep. But he woke to find the mattress shifting, bedsheets hissing, so he turned over, squinting.

"Peril?"

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Illya froze, muscles of his bare back going rigid. "I–I need to–We shouldn't have..."

Napoleon swore, screwing his eyes shut. _Stupid_. He was so stupid. He'd broken his cardinal rule: never be a guy's first time with another man, because of the inevitable personal crisis it would provoke. Stupid of him to hope that Illya would be any different, that this might mean enough to Illya that he'd be okay.

"Look, Peril," he sighed, suddenly exhausted, telling himself the nausea in his gut was due to a hangover, "this doesn't have to be a big deal."

Illya finally whipped around to stare at him, open panic on his face. Something died in Napoleon's chest.

"But we just..." Illya said, the end of his sentence swooping upwards in an inarticulate plea for Napoleon to _fix this_. Any other man, he'd tell them to sort themselves out, to keep him out of it. But this wasn't just any other man; this was Illya.

"We were tipsy. Lonely. People do things they..." Napoleon grimaced. "People do stuff they don't mean when they're like that. It's not...don't worry about it. Just forget it. You should get out of here before your handlers notice you're gone."

With a breathless nod, Illya turned away, gathering his scattered clothes, while Napoleon flopped back against the mattress, throwing his forearm over his face

"If you see Gaby, can you tell her..." Illya swallowed, loud enough for Napoleon to hear even though he kept his eyes covered. "Just say..."

"I'll tell her you say hi," Napoleon sing-songed, almost manic with false buoyancy, praying that Illya would just hurry up and leave already so he could pull himself together.

There was a pause. Then Illya sighed. "Okay, thanks," he grunted. Then the shuffle of footsteps, click, creak, click, the door opening and closing.

Napoleon let himself fall apart.

### 1966 - February

Even in February, Jakarta was hot, and at the peak of monsoon season the humid air clung to Gaby's skin as she stepped out during a rare dry spell, ducking through the crowds, eyeing Merdeka Square across the way, catching glimpses, amongst the mess of demolition, of the monument that President Sukarno had ordered five years ago, which had only barely begun to rise. British agents were among the most unwelcome in Jakarta, after the slogging jungle warfare between Indonesia and British-backed Malaysia, but Gaby was neither British nor an agent–at least according to her visa, which proclaimed in monospaced capitals that she was Sabine Mueller, a new secretary at the German consulate.

At the end of the day, another one spent hunting for information about a contact who'd gone missing, leaving her with nothing gained, she found a bar, this one close enough to the embassies and consulates to be serving foreigners. She slumped at the bar, got a drink, and stared at the far wall, exhausted from the heat, from the numb horror she got reading day-by-day reports of the killings the military was exacting on what they claimed were communists. Gaby knew she was supposed to feel happy about that. All the British were celebrating this rare flip, a country turning its back on communism, for once. It was hard to feel happy about the estimates she'd seen, numbers of the dead that the British government was very concertedly keeping out of the hands of any nosy journalists.

"Buy you a drink?"

Gaby swung around, rejection already on her tongue, but held it back when her angry glare was returned by a pair of familiar blue eyes.

"Hey," added Napoleon, perching on the stool to her right as he glanced away, trying to make contact with the bartender.

"What are you doing here?"

"Seriously, you want something?"

"Vodka rocks."

Napoleon's eyes flicked back to her. She'd changed her drink order in the nearly two years since they'd seen each other, and he'd obviously noticed this. This was why Gaby hated socializing with spies; they read too much into everything. As their drinks were made they both fell silent, alternately eyeing each other and pretending not to be eyed. He looked unchanged, the same smart suit and slicked-back hair, same glass-smooth façade masking whatever real expressions his face might have been tempted to adopt.

"How long have you been here?" he asked, with a conversational tone which had to be fake.

"Since just before the assassinations. Coup attempt. Whatever you want to call it."

He blew out a soft breath. "September?"

"August."

"So you've seen the shit hit the fan."

Gaby shrugged. The terrifying thing was that despite what she'd seen in Jakarta, she knew it was nothing compared to the violence outside the city. Their drinks arrived, saving her the trouble of responding properly.

"My station chief mentioned a name to me," Napoleon began after taking the first sip of his whiskey. "Catur Ramadhan. Military general, not a top man but not the bottom of the food chain. Station chief said some woman's been sniffing around for him. German, or Swiss maybe, no one was sure. But I thought..." Turning to look at her again, Napoleon's brows dipped down a fraction of an inch.

Damn him. Catur Ramadhan was exactly who she was looking for. "Are you going to be a problem for me?" she asked.

"We should go someplace to talk." He pulled out his wallet and stared at the bills for a long moment, frown growing as he thumbed through the colourful currency.

Getting fed up, Gaby snatched the billfold from his hand, withdrew the correct amount to toss on the bar, then got up to leave. "Are you coming or not?"

* * *

The C.I.A. safehouse, a few blocks' walk away, was like every other safehouse Gaby had visited; an unremarkable flat furnished in a very particular way, all mismatched and outdated, but somehow devoid of any hominess, just sterile. The only other places that came close to this 'style' were cheap hotels that were twenty years past their last attempt at décor. At least this one didn't reek of cat piss, though, just cigarette smoke. She knew Napoleon didn't smoke except socially, so it couldn't have been from him.

Napoleon offered her a drink from a small cabinet. She refused it. He poured one for himself then sat down on the sofa. "What's your interest in Ramadhan?"

"I need to see him. That's all you have to know."

Unlike Illya, Napoleon had very few tells, so she nearly missed the corners of his eyes tightening for a split second before he smoothed his expression out, but thanks to that year working together in U.N.C.L.E. she knew what that meant. Her non-answer had annoyed him.

"We're not enemies in this," he reasoned, too smooth.

"Then stop treating me like it," Gaby snapped, gesturing around the safehouse, which was obviously wired for sound by the C.I.A. "What's _your_ interest in Ramadhan, then, if we're so friendly?"

"You know I can't tell you. Classified."

Gaby glared at him. He returned her gaze, level, unruffled. Maddening.

"Well, great chat, very productive use of my time." Standing, Gaby brushed off her skirt and made for the door. "Have a good–"

"Doesn't mean we can't work together," Napoleon interrupted, making her stop. "We have some mutual interests in this. And I'm pretty sure we both have something the other needs."

Narrowing her eyes, Gaby gestured for him to continue.

"I have a lead on where he is. You don't." Napoleon paused, leaving an opening for her to confirm this, which she didn't, even though it was true. "But you've been on the ground here longer than me. You have connections. You can make some introductions for me. Plus..." Hesitating, Napoleon eyed her.

"Plus what?"

"Plus you traveling outside Jakarta, alone, is going to..."

"I can take care of myself."

Napoleon made a short huff, an almost grin flashing on his face. "Jesus, Gabs, I know. Better than almost anyone else on the planet." For the first time since running into the façade of a man at the bar, she could see the real Napoleon, the one she'd known. It made something jolt uncertainly in her. "But you know as well as me that this place isn't exactly tourist central for westerners now, what with the mass killings, all that fun stuff, so you're going to get asked a lot of questions. Ones I can dodge more easily."

"Jack Deviny, American oil executive, here to check on his investment?" Gaby asked drily.

"Uh, yeah, something like that." With the way he looked put-out, Gaby suspected she'd guessed his game a little too closely, for which he had no one to blame but himself because his cover stories were always dreadfully predictable, an odd oversight in his otherwise immaculate tradecraft. At least Illya tried, though if anything his covers tended towards too elaborate. Russian architect traveling to Rome because so-and-so minister has a weakness for classical architecture, for example.

Shaking herself from the memories, Gaby looked Napoleon dead in the eye. "I'm coming with you."

Napoleon's lips twitched in another near smile. "I expected nothing less."

* * *

Two days later they were being manoeuvred around the worst ruts in the pavement on the road to Bandung, a few hours southeast of Jakarta, by Asep, Gaby's fixer, interpreter, and driver, who once again had the radio too loud in his Land Rover, blasting Indonesian pop music, which Gaby now recognized as Koes Bersaudara, since Asep had used their drives as a chance to educate her on his favourite group. As they turned a corner, rolling up to a military checkpoint, at least he turned it down. While he answered the soldiers' questions Gaby gazed around at the jungle, playing the part of the overwhelmed wife to Napoleon's oil executive, twisting her 'wedding ring', the one she'd bought for herself for occasions such as this, around her finger. Napoleon smiled at the soldiers with dead eyes; he really did make the perfect corporate type.

Asep's voice turned tense as the questioning dragged on.

"Is there a problem?" Gaby asked him. "You explained our business here, right? The oil."

Interrupting himself in the middle of what seemed to be turning into an argument with a soldier who looked about seventeen, Asep turned back to her. "I did. They're trying to tell me it's not safe for you here."

"Is that advice or a threat?"

Asep just shrugged.

* * *

By the time they arrived in Bandung it was too late to get anything done. The streets were eerily empty, and those few people who ventured out held their shoulders taut and kept their heads low. Asep had no trouble finding them a hotel. Through him Napoleon booked two rooms, one for Asep and one for them. Gaby scowled at the side of his face while he ignored her, flirting with the receptionist.

She waited until they'd closed the door to their room, until she heard the porter's steps start to disappear down the hall, until Napoleon had kicked off his shoes and flopped back on the bed with a relieved groan.

"One room?" she questioned.

Napoleon closed his eyes. "Married, remember? With all the damn checkpoints that stopped us probably half the city knew we were coming, the two foreigners. Have to keep up the act."

"I know that," she shot back, not sure what she'd expected him to say but frustrated with him, with the hours spent in that Land Rover in the muggy air, with the entire mission and with her growing unease about her role in what was happening in this country. She stood over the bed and glared until he shuffled to make room for her, then she sprawled out next to him, as far as she could get without rolling off the bed, staring at the ceiling, willing the day to just be over.

"I'll take the couch," Napoleon said into the empty air, not looking at her.

Lifting her head, Gaby eyed the couch. It was a two-seater, and a small one at that. She dropped back to the mattress and sighed. "It's fine. Not like I wasn't stuck playing married to you and Illya half the time anyways."

For a moment she thought Napoleon was about to respond to that. Then he just grunted as he pulled himself up. "Taking a shower. You need in the bathroom?"

Gaby waved him off, closing her eyes, plotting how the next day would go. She had a couple of sources here, whom she would've preferred to keep to herself but whose introduction she had promised to Napoleon as her part of their bargain. After plotting things through she let herself relax, drifting, not asleep but loose and unworried.

The hiss of the shower cut out. A minute later came the rumbling slosh of the bathtub being filled. Napoleon had remembered. Back in the U.N.C.L.E. year whenever she'd had to share a room with him they'd fallen into a routine; he'd take the bathroom first in the evenings, shower, brush his teeth, and run a tub for her, which he always made a bit too hot, no matter how often she'd told him so. After waiting a few more minutes Gaby wandered over and stuck her head into the bathroom, finding him, as expected, brushing his teeth. Going to turn down the temperature on the tub, she then pulled herself up onto the bathroom counter, her legs swinging, toes bumping into the shower curtain where it was bunched up outside the tub.

"So, what's the plan for tomorrow?" Napoleon asked, though it was through a mouthful of toothpaste so it ended up more as 'oh, whassa plan 'or 'ahmarrow', forcing her to grudgingly concede, though only to herself, that she probably hadn't given him enough credit. He might have taken charge on the hotel room booking because it was expected, but he'd never had an ego around her, never had one of those masculine needs to be in control which she constantly ran up against with other agents.

"I have a source here. Worked with him for four months, though most of that long-distance, from Jakarta. He's decently reliable."

"What do I need to know?"

"His name is Prabu, mid-forties, married, one kid, a daughter. Relatively liberal, not aligned with the religious groups or the nationalists."

"He's a communist, then?"

"Not really. He was friendly to some of their politics, though."

Napoleon leaned down to spit, rinse, then blew out a breath. "That's still enough to be dangerous these days. He's lucky he hasn't been killed. What's he do?"

"A lot of odd jobs. 'This and that', he says." Gaby shrugged. "But he seems to know everything that happens in Bandung. That's what matters most to me." She hopped down from the counter to turn off the tub.

"Javanese?"

Glancing at him again, Gaby let herself be a bit impressed. He'd done his homework, at least enough to know the broad strokes of the ethnic groups here. "Sundanese."

Napoleon nodded, then pushed away from the sink, heading for the door. "I'll be up for a bit so don't worry about waking me." Then he was gone, leaving her to her tub.

After her bath she crawled into bed, eyeing the book he was reading, something in Italian she didn't recognize, before turning away to settle down. With a soft slap he closed his book and, a moment later, turned off the lamp on his side of the bed. Illya had always done the same thing, always been considerate enough to not keep her up, never something she'd needed to ask for, just something offered freely. She tried to imagine Illya now, what he'd be doing, but she couldn't clear the mental hurdle, instead only able to conjure memories from times when she'd done this with him, played the married couple. If she closed her eyes and focused on the warmth of the body next to hers, she could almost make herself believe it was him beside her, not Napoleon.

* * *

In the morning they started looking for Prabu, though it became obvious that he didn't want to be found. It took until the afternoon for them to track him down at a house, not the last address he'd given Gaby, and when he opened the door he gave them a jittery look.

"You need to leave," he said, translated by Asep.

"If you're not going to work for us anymore, then you need to give back all the money I just paid you last week," Gaby hardballed.

"He says your money won't matter to him if he's dead. He says..." Asep paused, frowning, interrupting Prabu to ask him something. "He says you need to help him leave. He'll go anywhere, Singapore, Hong Kong, just can't stay in Indonesia."

"I'll try to help you if you tell us what you know about Catur Ramadhan." Internally, Gaby swore, though she kept her voice steady. Prabu was a decent source, but not spectacular, he hadn't done enough to earn the notice or gratitude of her superiors. Her odds of getting them to move him were poor when they were more concerned with hindering nosy Western journalists than with the life of one Indonesian who had, in the past, supported the communists.

Prabu bit his lip, then bustled them into his house, a little ground-level flat on a lane off of a market road. They sat down. Prabu kept glancing out the window.

"He says that Ramadhan is in town. He heard this from some p—several, several people. Said he's in the north of the city, near the mountains."

They talked for a few minutes, trying to pin down more details, but Prabu had none to offer. He looked exhausted, kept awake only by nerves, and further into the house Gaby could hear his young daughter babbling. She'd get him out, she vowed to herself.

* * *

Despite the tip, Ramadhan obviously did not wish to be found either. After an afternoon of searching they returned to the hotel and Gaby collapsed on the bed, skin sticky and overheated from the monsoon rain, staring at the ceiling in a tired haze. Once she'd had a few minutes of wallowing she pulled herself up to call the Jakarta head of station, already gritting her teeth. Samuel Hollingsworth had made no secret of his low opinions of female agents, and no attempt to show Gaby anything other than patronizing disdain. She longed, once again, for U.N.C.L.E., working under Waverly's thoughtful, guiding hand.

"I have a friend who wants to take a holiday," she told Hollingsworth after she'd been put through by his secretary. "Our friend here in Bandung," she added, vague, since the hotel line was not particularly secure.

"Our friend in Bandung? I'm not sure he's earned a holiday yet," replied Hollingsworth, indifferent. "Some of our other friends have been much more useful."

"Sir, with all due respect," which would have been extremely little respect if Gaby could've gotten away with it, "he really needs this. He asked me, personally, and I promised him I'd try to arrange it."

"Well, what did you go and promise a thing like that for?" Hollingsworth scoffed. "We're not a travel agency. We don't just send people on hols if they ask nice. Bloody women, too soft. Look, everyone wants a holiday. Hell, I want to get out of this nightmare of a country as fast as I can. But we can't send everyone."

"We haven't sent _anyone_ , though. But I've lost four...friends in the past three months. I don't want to lose another."

Hollingsworth sighed. "Look, I'll look into it, but don't hold your breath, sweetheart, won't happen fast. We have bigger priorities." Then he snickered. "How's your 'husband'?"

"He's fine."

"Causing you any trouble?"

"No. He knows better than to try that with me."

A noise escaped Hollingsworth that sounded vaguely like ' _whipped'_ '. Then he grunted his goodbyes and hung up. Letting all the air out of her lungs in a frustrated huff, Gaby let herself fall back against the pillows.

"Your boss sounds like a piece of work," came Napoleon's voice from somewhere to her right. "My sympathies."

"Are you back with Sanders?"

"Don't remind me." The mattress shifted as he sat down on the far side of the bed. "Indonesia is his way of punishing me."

"For what?"

"Beats me. Breathing, probably. You're not with Waverly anymore?"

Gaby frowned at the ceiling. "No. M.I.6 is big, he's too high up to supervise me directly. I run into him sometimes around the office, if I'm in London, but I don't really work with him anymore. We still keep in touch, though." It was probably far more than she should have revealed, but she was too exhausted to box herself up in confidentiality rules, and, despite having no good reason to, after all these years she still trusted Napoleon not to screw her over. "He, um, he invited me for Christmas dinner. I couldn't go, I was here, but it was...I don't know. Maybe next year."

A thoughtful noise escaped Napoleon. "If you see him, pass along my regards."

"And if I see Sanders I'll punch him in the face."

Napoleon snorted. "God, I'd pay good money to see that. I'm just hoping that soon enough he'll piggyback off my success and get a promotion to oversee someone more important than me."

"Fingers crossed."

A sentiment which really summed up far more of her time in Indonesia than she cared to think about.

* * *

Day three in Bandung felt endless, stuck rattling around in the Land Rover with Asep and Napoleon with the occasional break to talk to a contact. And when they finally made it back to the hotel, Napoleon got caught up in a long, contentious phone call with Sanders, ten minutes into which Gaby realized she just couldn't stand to be around him any longer. So she slipped out into the hall, pausing in front of Asep's door to consider how long ago the call to prayer had sounded. It had probably been about twenty minutes, so he'd be back from the mosque. Sure enough, he answered her knock with a grin, inviting her in with a sweep of his hand.

"Come in. Just finishing up a call with Dewi." Asep trotted around the bed to retrieve the phone, switching back to Sundanese, though he broke away a few moments later. "She wants to say hello to you."

Gaby smiled, settling into the wooden chair next to the window and gesturing for Asep to pass her the phone. "Hi Dewi," she said. "Sorry to drag your husband out of town again."

"As long as you bring him back safe, I don't mind," Dewi replied, not unkind, but Gaby knew that Dewi's worries were genuine and for good reason. "With him gone it gives me a chance to clean the house properly, at least. Is he doing his job well?"

"Always."

"And staying out of trouble?"

Gaby snorted. "As much as he ever does. We can't go anywhere without him making friends with someone."

"I'm friendly," Asep pointed out, his brown eyes sparkling with good humour. "It helps with my job."

"You also almost got into a fight with someone today because they said they hate Koes Bersaudara."

"He didn't even hate them for a good reason! He was just a boring old man who doesn't understand the music of today."

Dewi laughed into Gaby's ear. "I think Asep should have been a musician. His true calling. Better than a stuffy bureaucrat like his father wants."

"Maybe we'd be listening to him on the radio instead of Koes Bersaudara," Gaby mused, grinning when Asep let out a half-hearted protest. "Anyways, I'll let you talk to him."

After Gaby passed the phone back to Asep she sat back, gazing out the window, eyeing the looming clouds that held tomorrow's rain. Sure, she'd left her room to get away from another one-sided phone call, but Napoleon's sniping at Sanders was just plain irritating to listen to; at least Asep was obviously enjoying talking to Dewi. Still, a few minutes later he hung up, then sat on the bed and turned to Gaby.

"So, Mr. Solo is, what's the expression? Driving you nuts?"

"Yep."

"He's so...American."

"Yep," Gaby snickered.

"Why did you agree to work with him again? He seems more trouble than he's worth. Very..." Asep frowned, "it's like there is a mirror. Where his face should be. He's not sincere, he just shows you what he thinks you want to see."

"That's just how he works."

"You really trust him?" Asep questioned dubiously. "He slows us down. I don't know how long he's been here, but he doesn't understand the money, the culture, I have to apologize for him all the time."

"He's not doing that on purpose. He just got here a few weeks ago. You had to apologize for me all the time at first, too," Gaby pointed out, unsure why she was now defending the man she'd come here to get away from, but prickling at Asep's reading of him. "Look, I worked with him for a year. He's a good agent. One of the best. And he's not like that off duty."

"So, you are coming here to see me because he's so pleasant and genuine now?"

"It's not...He's taking a call. I didn't want to intrude."

Asep made a hum, not quite agreeing but not disagreeing, carefully indifferent, turning to look out the window. After a few seconds he sighed. "I don't know what's going to happen to this country. I keep trying to convince Dewi to leave, once we have enough money, but she doesn't want to leave her family."

"If you two decide to leave, I'll help you," Gaby vowed. "Anything you need."

With a shrug, Asep turned towards her. "We'll see. I just..." He sat heavily on the bed. "Things weren't perfect here. I know that. Maybe change was needed, maybe the communists were becoming too powerful. That's what some of the men at the mosque were saying. But everything that's happened...All of the deaths." Asep buried his hands in his head. "It's like I'm on a plane with two engines that just broke in the middle of a flight. We're going down. Everyone knows it. Maybe the captain will be a hero and find a way for us to land safely. Maybe it will be a disaster. But there's nothing I can do about it. I am not in the captain's seat. I can only sit here and pray that things work out okay in the end."

He sounded exhausted. Gaby wished she could say that she was doing everything she could to help the situation, but any optimism she'd had upon arriving here had evaporated away over the months. Mostly it just felt like her role was to twist events into whatever shape would be most advantageous for the British, without any regard for the effects on people like Asep and Dewi.

"You know," he continued, "Gaby, it's my job to help you here. That's the contract we signed, and that's what I'm getting paid for, even if I don't like your orders." That he didn't particularly like Gaby's mission was not news to her, but it was a subject they normally skirted around. "Before you came here I worked with other agents. Mostly British, that's how Hollingsworth knew me. The other agents, I didn't like any of them. They were all disrespectful or arrogant or cruel. For me, they were a paycheque. But I like you. Dewi likes you, and I trust her judgement more than anyone else's. So I will tell you one thing I never bothered to tell the other agents: the work you're doing, it's not right, and I think you know that."

Gaby grimaced, trying to hold Asep's gaze even though she itched to look away in shame. "Yeah. I know."

"You still care about people. Get out before you stop caring." With that Asep stood, glancing towards the window. "Anyways, it's almost time for nighttime prayer." Then he gave her a half smile, not letting her off easy, but moving on. "You remember the name of this one?"

He'd been teaching her about Islam during her time here. She had learned a lot, though she was aware that she probably didn't deserve the amount of patience Asep had with her total ignorance when she'd arrived.

"Isha," she answered.

Asep grinned. "Good, good. You know, you picked a good time to learn about Islam from me. Normally, I am more...relaxed about everything. Dewi always teases me for being a bad Muslim. But with everything that's happening now, I figured why not? Can't make anything worse."

* * *

The next two days they hunted for Ramadhan, braving more monsoon rain, searching the neighbourhoods in the north of Bandung without luck. Even after returning to the hotel and changing clothes, Gaby never felt dry, the humid air sticking to her skin, leaving her unable to sleep. Yet they were starting to get close. Picking up more clues, hints that he might have left town, piecing things together. She'd forgotten how easy it was to work like this with Napoleon, falling back into old rhythms, though both pointedly failed to mention the absent third party who had previously been central to those rhythms.

But they were still missing something. Unable to quite get close enough to reach Ramadhan. So they decided to visit Prabu again to see if he'd learned anything new.

He didn't answer the door. It was dark inside the house, but when Gaby, trying to convince herself everything was okay, peeked through the window she saw the furniture upended, glass smashed. Hearing Asep begin to speak, she turned around to find him talking to an elderly woman, poking her head out from the house across the street.

"She says you won't find anyone home. They took him. Two days ago."

"Who?" Gaby demanded, even though she already knew the answer.

"The military. But he tried to resist so they killed him." The old woman pointed to a spot about a metre to Gaby's left, which she now noticed, to her horror, was stained dark brown. "There. They..." Asep grimaced as the woman talked for about thirty seconds. "It was very bloody," he concluded, obviously censoring whatever the woman was describing, but for once Gaby was okay with that.

" _Fuck_ ," Gaby breathed, swinging around, eyes inadvertently landing on the dark patch on the ground. Her stomach roiled. "Fuck."

"Gabs—"

"He _told_ me." She rounded on Napoleon, incensed that he would try to talk her down, to reason with her right now. "When we were here. He told me they were going to—He begged me for help and I—I tried but I couldn't..."

"I know." It was in that tone of Napoleon's, his soothing voice, which now made her want to throttle him.

"What about his family?" she asked Asep, desperate.

After Asep translated, the woman just shrugged. "She says she hasn't seen them in a week. She doesn't know what happened to them. They weren't here when he was killed. She...she hopes they are okay. She says they were a nice family, good. Even if he was a communist. He never bothered her."

Gaby closed her eyes and swore again. She was too late. She hadn't done enough, hadn't tried hard enough, and now Prabu was dead, and perhaps his family, too.

As she reeled, trying to push down a wave of nausea, she distantly heard Napoleon and Asep talking about next steps to finding Ramadhan. She knew that they were being practical about things; they still had their missions to complete, and Napoleon hadn't really known Prabu, so the man's death meant little beyond an abstract loss in a time when so many more were also losing their lives. Still, she couldn't stop picturing it, imagining the terror of Prabu's final moments, imagining—

"C'mon, let's go," Napoleon said, stepping into her line of sight. "Asep wants to head back to the hotel and call some guys he knows, see if we can find Ramadhan another way." He began to walk away but turned back and frowned when she didn't follow him, too numb to move. "Gabs, look, I know you feel shitty right now. But standing around letting guilt eat you up doesn't help anyone. Doesn't help Prabu." The way Napoleon spoke sounded so level, like this was not the first time he'd had this sort of conversation. "And I think you know that."

She did. She nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, let's go." Pushing past him, she headed for the Land Rover. "At least if we track down Ramadhan, it won't all be for nothing."

* * *

The next day Gaby jolted out of sleep around dawn, not by the morning call to prayer for once, but instead by the phone ringing on the opposite side of the bed, followed shortly by a groan, the covers shifting, and the slapping sounds of Napoleon hunting for the phone without opening his eyes.

"H'lo?" he grunted. After a pause Gaby was prodded in the shoulder with the receiver. "It's for you."

"Pack up, you're done there," was how Gaby's always charming head of station began their conversation. "We found Ramadhan. Picked up COMINT placing in him Surabaya, which we confirmed by sending a local agent 'round to check. So head back to Jakarta today, plenty of other things you should be doing."

Gaby blinked at the ceiling. "We're done? What happens with Ramadhan?"

"You're done. And that's no longer your concern, given the complete lack of results your little holiday has produced. Once you're back you'll be shifted onto something else. Don't be la—"

"Our friend here is dead."

A pause. Then Hollingsworth spoke. "That it? Thought you had something useful to tell me."

"You don't care what happened?"

"I assume the military got him because that seems to be the leading cause of death around here these days. And need I remind you that we're on their side? They're cleaning house of the communists, which aligns with our goals, but if you start getting stroppy about that you could blow up the whole diplomatic situation for us."

"He wasn't even a communist, he was just...Never mind," Gaby muttered, suddenly too agitated to remain in bed. The phone was on Napoleon's side and the cord wasn't long enough for her to go around the foot of the bed so she crawled over him, ignoring his grunt of protest, to stand up so she could pace away from the bed. "This 'cleaning house' seems to involve an awful lot of murdering civilians."

"Oh God, you got _attached_ to the man. Look, here's a tip, sweetheart: sources are like goldfish; best not get sentimental since sooner or later a lot of them end up getting flushed. So stop being soft and next time I send you to do a job, actually _do_ it, please. And be back here for a debrief before the end of the day." Without allowing her any response, Hollingsworth concluded their conversation by abruptly hanging up.

Balling her hands into fists, Gaby set the phone back in its cradle then slumped to sit on the edge of the bed, prompting another grunt from Napoleon when she bumped into him.

"What's up?" he mumbled.

"I'm being ord—" She swallowed, her throat tight. It had been a long time since she'd angry enough to cry and she wasn't going to let that happen now, but she needed to blink furiously at the ceiling for a second. "I'm heading back to Jakarta. Effective immediately."

Before he could say anything Napoleon was cut off when the phone rang again. "Hello? Yes, sir. Sorry, Agent Teller was taking a call. I see. Sir, we've come all this way and I really don't think—Yes, sir, I understand. Goodbye." He hung up. "Well, at least we Americans aren't too far behind you Brits, for once. Back to Jakarta for me too."

Gaby sighed, screwing her eyes shut to watch the little stars dance on the insides of her eyelids, more defeated than she'd felt in years. But her wallowing was interrupted when Napoleon jostled her shoulder with his own.

"C'mon, I want to show you something." He pulled himself out of bed, throwing on a t-shirt. "Don't worry about getting dressed, we're not going out, just c'mere."

All she wanted to do was lie down or sob or scream but instead she rose, still in her pajamas, following Napoleon to the back flight of stairs, surprised when instead of going down he led her up two flights, pausing at the top to fiddle with a locked door, which he had swinging open within ten seconds. She'd forgotten just how fast he was at that and it was faintly unnerving to contemplate being on the wrong side of it. But she pushed past that, stepping out behind him onto the roof of their hotel then gazing up at the cloudy sky, a faint hint of the sunrise just peeking through, turning the eastern sky a soft yellow, highlighting the ridges of the mountains that surrounded Bandung.

"Pretty good view, isn't it?" Napoleon wandered over to the edge of the building, leaning back against the half wall that surrounded the rooftop, propping his weight on his elbows. She went to join him, resting her butt against the wall and crossing her arms, frowning as a slight drizzle began, just the odd drop hitting the back of her neck every other second.

"What are we doing here?" she asked.

"Watching the sunrise."

"No, I mean _here_ , in Indonesia. You and I."

Napoleon's mouth twisted into a sardonic smirk. "Saving the country from communism. Restoring capitalism to its rightful place."

"So the British and American mining companies can keep working here, without the communists nationalizing everything," Gaby provided bitterly.

"Don't forget the oil companies."

She snorted. "Of course." The sun found its way through a gap in the clouds, forcing her to squint at the sudden stab of light. "You know it's not just one or two people getting killed, right?"

"Yeah."

"Have you seen the numbers? We're not sure, but our best guess is it's a hundred thousand at least. It might be a lot more. This country is in the middle of a bloodbath and you know what my job is?" Gaby tried to laugh but the noise came out fractured. "I stop western journalists from finding out. I needed to find Ramadhan because we got wind he was leaking details, which we can't have of course because the British say it would 'hurt morale' back home. Stop people from celebrating how the communists lost. And the worst part is that plenty of people dying weren't even party members, they're just..."

"Sympathizers. Or liberals, unbelievers, intellectuals, and select ethnic minorities," Napoleon provided. "I know. Who do you think gave them lists of targets? I mean, not me personally, happened before I got here, but some of the high-profile killings? We didn't pull the trigger, but we made it clear what we wanted, and in exchange we get to my actual job, which is to distribute funds and supplies to the military. In between snitching to journalists, Ramadhan also ran off with $500,000 worth of medical supplies. Goods I gave him. But hey, like you say, at least the communists are toast here."

Gaby bit her lip. "I don't know if we're on the right side of this."

He shrugged. "Things weren't great here before. Sukarno’s economic policies have gone from bad to worse, and his ability to balance the different factions was evaporating. But we took a spark of anger and dumped a fuel tanker's worth of gasoline on it. I mean," he dragged a hand over his face. "Before U.N.C.L.E. I didn't ask these kinds of questions. Just did my job. But Illya and his damn morality got to me. You know he wouldn't let us get away with feeling good about this just because capitalism won."

"It was different at U.N.C.L.E., like we were really doing good, the three of us. But now I..." Running out of words, Gaby went quiet. Some of her previous missions for M.I.6 had left a bad taste in her mouth, but it had never been anything like this. She'd never before had to live for so long within the violence that she had, if not created, tacitly supported by continuing to do her job, all in the name of some nebulous 'greater good' which seemed to be not at all good for a huge number of people. She glanced over to Napoleon and found him staring off into the mountains, his expression twisted with confusion.

It was so foolish that she'd expected him to have the answers. Yet despite the years now separating them, she'd fallen back into old habits. He and Illya had always seemed so mature and worldly to her, as she'd tried not to reveal to them just how much she'd been struggling with the sheer newness and strangeness of life beyond the Wall. They'd never made her feel lesser despite her relative lack of experience as an agent, which was why she'd felt safe enough to lean on them a bit, to watch how they moved through the world and try to absorb some of their confidence for herself, something she hadn't truly appreciated until they were torn apart and she'd had to navigate the world alone. In the years since she'd done fine. Indeed, confirming for herself that she didn't need them had probably done her good. But working with Napoleon again reminded her just how much she had also lost.

"I can't believe it's been two years," Gaby murmured.

"Since U.N.C.L.E.?"

"Yeah. And since...Illya."

"I..." Napoleon gave her a flash of a look, eyes flicking open, but before she could read more into it he glanced away, staring over his far shoulder. "Yeah, two years."

"What do you think he's doing now?"

"Saving the world."

"He was always..."

"Yeah."

It didn't surprise her that Napoleon knew what she was trying to say. Illya was the best of them. They both knew that Illya was the kind of person who would some day die for the cause if he truly believed it would do good. She and Napoleon did good in their own ways, of course, but she'd seen in Napoleon that same stubborn, ruthless survivalism that she knew he'd also recognized in her. Neither of them would ever let themselves be a sacrificed pawn, even if it came at the expense of a greater loss. They were perhaps the worst sort of kindred spirits, both drawn to Illya's goodness even as they refused to reckon with the ugly reflections of their worst traits revealed by each other.

When Napoleon turned, staring down at the streets, Gaby realized that the mosques had let out from morning prayers. She had to tell Asep what had happened, then pack up and prepare for what would no doubt be one of the worst debriefings of her career.

* * *

Upon their return to Jakarta Gaby had parted ways with a wave and a vague promise to stay in touch, which she had little intention of following through on, then squared her shoulders and went to see Hollingworth. A week later Asep was driving her to the airport, blasting one last round of Indonesian pop music. She couldn't believe it, but she suspected she'd actually miss some of the catchier tunes. When Asep helped her unload her bags she repeated her vow to help him and Dewi escape, which was met with a grimace and another polite refusal. After what happened to Prabu, Gaby couldn't blame him.

And finally, as the plane banked away from Jakarta, Gaby stared down at the country she'd spent seven months of her life in while trying to think of what good she'd done for it. After a few seconds she swallowed, stared at her feet, then rummaged for the book she'd brought for distraction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Indonesia** : Part of this chapter is set in Indonesia in 1966, during a political upheaval which resulted in the mass killing of between roughly 500,00 and 1 million people (precise figures are not available, these are accepted by many as a best estimate). None of the violence is explicitly shown, however a character is killed "off-screen". I am not Indonesian. I have tried to strike a balance of portraying the events accurately as I think Gaby would have experienced them, not glossing over them, not sensationalizing the violence, and not speaking for Indonesia while still showing Indonesian perspectives. However if I have erred in any way, please let me know, and I will rework things as needed.
> 
> I've written a fair number of fics for TMFU, and in the process I have done a fair amount of research on the global politics of the 1960s and the history of espionage at this time. At some point, I became increasingly uneasy with ignoring reality. As fun as TMFU is, the Cold War was not bloodless in any sense, with countries of the Global South bearing a disproportionate brunt of the damage inflicted by the superpowers. Both the damage and the infliction of it continue to this day.
> 
> All OCs are entirely my creation and not meant to depict real people, etc etc
> 
>  **if you've made it this far**  
>  I promise that this is the darkest part of this fic. From here on, it will gradually move towards more relationship-oriented stuff. I won't be letting the characters off entirely easy in regards to their consciences, but they'll have more room to breathe. The fic is about 80% done, so hopefully I will not be leaving too long between updates.


	2. 1967 - 1968

### 1967 - April

Illya had been to a lot of bars in his life. Not because he liked drinking—he didn't—but for his career. Today's bar, though, was an especially seedy specimen, its floor flypaper sticky, the cigarette smoke so thick that the far wall of the not-very-large room was lost to an ashy haze. Illya coddled two beers over three hours, earning sour looks from the bartender, but his target never showed, leaving him with nothing gained apart from time wasted, which his handlers were certainly not employing him for. Then again, they were the ones who gave him the intel, so stripped of anything considered beyond his need to know that he'd been left pecking at the dry bones of the information. So at least he could blame his lack of success on whoever provided the latest carcass for giving him a bad cut.

Decided, he slapped some coins down on the bartop, failing to avoid putting his hand in a tacky spot, the origin of which he didn't wish to contemplate. He turned to leave, casting one last glance around the bar. And then he froze.

He'd noticed her entering the bar from the other door, what little he could see through the smoke. But the short, blonde woman didn't match his target, and after she'd sat down at the corner of the bar she'd done nothing conspicuous, so Illya had ceased to give her further attention. Now, though, she'd turned her head, for the first time when he's been looking at her, and Illya would know that face, those dark eyes anywhere.

Gaby caught his gaze, shoulders tensing for a mere half second before she recovered, swinging around to chat with the bartender. The blonde wig did odd things to Illya's head, making her shift in and out of recognition like someone fiddling with a radio dial to find a clear signal, yet he found himself baldly staring at her, pulse thrumming in his ears. He only realized he was staring when she sent the bartender away, amiable smile on her face, and the second he turned away she whipped around to give Illya a withering look.

Shifting from foot to foot, Illya forced his eyes away, indecision scrambling his thoughts.

She was his enemy now.

But it was Gaby.

If word got back to Moscow, he had so much to lose.

It was _Gaby._

His career. His life.

_Gaby._

Illya groped in his pocket to find a spare bit of paper and a pen, scrawled his hotel info, and tore the page loose. It was easy, then, to meander through the room, past Gaby, slipping the note into her purse and continue out the exit.

Now all he could do was wait.

* * *

By one in the morning Illya forced himself to admit that she wasn't coming. So, for want of anything better to do, he went to bed. Alone.

* * *

The next day Illya resumed his work. He told off his handlers for the faulty intel, perhaps less deferential than he would normally be, but refusing to blame his foul mood on anything but the wasted evening in the bar. The mission trudged forward with him spending the next two days back to basics; trailing people, following up with contacts, while waiting for fresh intel from headquarters. It was busywork which could have been delegated to a junior agent, and which Illya resented. He only did it because he wasn't going to let someone else ruin his mission again. Each night he returned to his hotel, sat awake telling himself he wasn't waiting for a knock at the door, one which never came, until he couldn't bear it any longer and went to bed.

On the third day his handlers were still waiting on headquarters and saw no point in exposing him more than necessary, so he was ordered to lay low. It was even worse than the busywork. He rattled around his hotel room until each look at the same four walls made him want to scrape out his own eyeballs, then ventured down the street to a café, then, in the evening, when he couldn't stand the café, he was back to the hotel. He paused just before letting himself into his room, noticing that a slit of light was emanating from under the door. He'd left the room dark. Drawing his pistol, he tucked himself against the door frame, took a steadying breath, then opened the door and pushed through it, pistol held ready in front of him.

"Rude," Gaby said from her seat on the bed with a curl of her lip, not rising to greet him.

Illya sagged, hands shaking. "I almost shot you." He holstered his pistol, pushing away mental images of what would have happened if he _had_ shot her, images of shooting just to the right of Solo's fleeing form, of just how close he had now come to killing both of them.

"But you didn't. I got your note. What do you want?"

"I just...I wanted to see you."

She went still, her eyes unfocused and fixed on the carpet before her. "Why?"

His first impulse was honesty, confessing how much he'd missed her these past three years, but then he thought of how she disappeared without a word of farewell, their last interaction tinged by anger and drunkenness on her part, grief on his. He thought of all that had happened in those three years, everything he'd done, how he'd tried to move on, something he had thought he'd succeeded at until this moment.

"Why did you come?" he asked her instead.

"I was curious."

When she offered nothing else Illya walked over, settling cautiously on the opposite corner of the bed, watching her for any reaction. And then he nearly groaned because she still _smelled_ the same. He hadn't even realized he'd memorized the lilac of her shampoo, the warm, soft scent of her skin, until he got his first lungful of it in three years. His head spun, his world spun, every axis realigning to fix on her.

"I missed you." He'd always been helpless at lying to her. She made no response, but her body stilled again. After a moment of calculation Illya reached over, set his hand atop hers where it rested on the bed next to her hip.

Gaby sucked in a rasping breath, her hand curling into the sheets under his. He watched her face, seeing her war with indecision in the set of her teeth against her lower lip. Then she whirled towards him, surging up to press her mouth to his, small and hot, the sear of it tearing a gasp from his chest.

"Should've done that four years ago," Gaby said when she pulled away. She grinned, radiant, then kissed him again.

* * *

That Gaby should kiss fiercely, demand his effort and attention and let him hold nothing back, was no surprise to Illya. That she should carry that fierceness with her as she pushed him back onto the bed wasn't either. What did surprise him was that when he asked for slower, gentler, she agreed, a faintly confused furrow in her brow but willing to let him lead. That she stopped to press a soft kiss to the scar on his temple with such aching tenderness that Illya nearly cried.

(What didn't surprise him, in the end, was the moment he buried his face in the shallows of her collarbones, breathed deeply, and felt at home for the first time in almost three years.)

* * *

Afterwards they slept for a few hours, then woke in the quiet hours before dawn to join together again. Once they finished and Gaby was curling up against him once more, Illya tucked her closer, treasuring the warmth of her body melting into his. She was drifting off, breaths slowing, when Illya spoke in a whisper.

"I wish we could stay here forever."

Gaby went stiff but said nothing.

* * *

When dawn came Illya awoke to Gaby sitting cross-legged on the bed, a river of hair tumbling down her back, which she was in the process of gathering into her still-customary ponytail.

"Good morning," Illya murmured, leaning up to drop a kiss to her shoulder. He thought he saw her tense, but then she resumed her motions, so he dismissed this. "When can I see you again? Tonight? We could—"

Gaby shook her head. "I can't."

"Tomorrow, then? My handlers, they make me wait, so—"

"I _can't_ , Illya." She let her hair elastic snap taut around her now-tamed mane, then rose from the bed, not looking at him. "This is my last day here. I fly out tonight."

No. No, no, no, this couldn't be happening. Illya must have made some noise because Gaby finally turned to give him a strange sort of not-quite-almost smile which didn't touch her eyes before glancing away to hunt for her scattered belongings, methodically rebuilding the walls between them, bra, dress, earrings, necklace.

"Gaby, please, wait—"

" _Don't_ , Illya. Don't make this any harder than it already is." Then her voice turned to censure, annoyance creasing her features as she retrieved her panties from beside the bed and examined them with a grimace before shoving them into her purse. "You knew this would happen. We both knew." Pausing, her shoulders sagged, her voice going thinner, lacking the weight of anger. "This is how it has to be. We're enemies now. This is all we can ever be."

Pain radiated through Illya's chest. He'd never imagined that anything could be worse than when she'd disappeared without a goodbye three years ago, but this? Worse. Far worse.

The worst part of all was that she was right. He'd forgotten that just long enough to get his heart broken.

Heading for the door, she gave him one more look, biting her lip, eyes going softer, sadder.

"Gaby..."

Her expression shut down, as instantly as if he'd flicked a switch. She turned her back to him again.

"Goodbye, Illya."

Then she was gone. And he was alone. Again.

* * *

His handlers would quietly deduct the cost of one ruined hotel room from his next paycheque. He didn't care, barely noticed, because when he returned to Moscow a week later, he received news that changed his entire life. He now had choices to make.

Time to do the right thing.

### 1967 - October

Monaco never changed. As Napoleon strode through the Hôtel de Paris, pausing to pluck a glass of champagne off a waiter's tray, he let the atmosphere of obscene wealth wash over him, comforting in its familiarity. Made him almost feel like he was his own man again, not someone with the C.I.A.'s boot on his neck. Sipping the champagne—which was exquisite, of course—Napoleon cast his eyes around the ballroom, forcing himself to look past the diamonds and gold to seek his target. Geneviève Blanchard, from the kind of money so old it couldn't really be found in America. She knew everyone who mattered and dabbled in art dealing, mostly legitimate, sometimes not. Napoleon had fenced some relatively minor Sisley landscapes and a few drawings by Schiele through her back in the day. Despite not needing the money, she was an utter shark. And sure, he'd slept with her, but he'd slept with everyone, so that wasn't noteworthy.

He caught sight of her holding court for a half dozen people, expressive hands flowing through the air as she rhapsodized about something, too distant for Napoleon to hear. In the circle around her he noted the Swiss head of a major international bank, a four-star N.A.T.O. general, two lesser members of the English royal family, and one Saudi prince. This was precisely why he'd been ordered to make contact with her again. With her extensive connections she'd be the perfect C.I.A. courier, able to move money to wealthy collaborators discreetly and, just as important, deniably, should a mission unravel in a public fashion.

The crowd was heavy but Napoleon deftly slipped through, just as the string orchestra went on break, sending couples venturing away from the dance floor to mingle. He circled around until he was in Geneviève's eyeline and waiting for her to see him, gracing her with his best smile.

"Jack?" she called out, interrupting herself.

"Geneviève." He approached, letting his smile grow flirtatious, pressing a kiss to the back of her proffered hand.

"Goodness, how long has it been? Ten years?"

"Right on the money." It had been exactly ten years, which Napoleon knew because he'd last spoken to her the year before the C.I.A. had captured him, which was a fairly memorable milestone in his life.

"I'd heard you'd been arrested," she tutted. Everyone else in her orbit, the four-star general, the banker, the royalty, all whipped to stare at Napoleon in undisguised alarm.

"Brief setback." He winked. "Didn't stick, though."

She grinned. She was utterly without morals, which was likely why they'd gotten on so well ten years ago. Then she turned to address the hangers-on. "Gentlemen, if you'll excuse me, I need to catch up with an old friend."

Wandering off, Geneviève didn't wait for him to follow. He followed. Conversations with her tended towards one-sided so Napoleon meekly allowed her to fill him in on how she'd spent the past ten years—doing much the same, living extravagantly if somewhat corruptly, though she'd gotten married, which was new. When she eventually turned the topic towards him he answered her questions, not revealing his C.I.A. connection yet but hinting that he'd found new employment. As they completed their circuit of the room Geneviève stilled, setting a hand on his arm.

"Oh, and there's someone I'd like you to meet. Now where...Ah! Come, come." She tugged him over to another small group of people. "Sabine?"

A woman turned to face them. Her eyes landed on Napoleon and she went still for a split second. Then she turned to Geneviève and smiled.

"Who is this?"

"Jack Deviny. A dear old friend. Jack, allow me to introduce Sabine Mueller."

Quirking her eyebrow, Gaby offered Napoleon her hand. He dutifully kissed the back of it, ducking his head to look at her through his eyelashes.

"A pleasure, Miss Mueller," he purred. "How do you and Geneviève know each other?"

"Do you remember Warren Jamison, Jack?" Geneviève answered. "That English banker. The one with the funny little moustache. He introduced Sabine to me. Six months ago, now."

Six months. She'd beaten him to a mission yet again. As if sensing the direction of his thoughts, Gaby smirked at him. This time, however, Napoleon was not entirely at a disadvantage.

"Geneviève and I were just catching up," he told her. "It's been far too long. Though I'd never guess it, looking at her." He shot another wink to Geneviève, who preened. While she was distracted, Gaby scowled at him, making him shoot her his own smirk. Their wordless sparring was interrupted when the orchestra picked up again.

"Oh, Jack, aren't you going to ask Sabine to dance?" prompted Geneviève, coy. There was no good reason to demur, so Napoleon offered Gaby his hand. For a moment she glared as if tempted to refuse, but, with a glance to the openly expectant Geneviève, she allowed him to lead her towards the dance floor.

"So, _Jack,_ " murmured Gaby as she stepped into his arms, the end of his assumed name cracking off her tongue like a whip, "you know Geneviève?"

"Oh yes, we go way back."

Gaby's eyes narrowed. Swaying closer, pressing her hand against his chest, she dropped the friendly pretense to hiss in his ear. "What are you doing here?"

"Same as you, I imagine. And turn," he paused to warn her, lifting his arm and sending her out under it. The expression which greeted him a second later was dripping with irritation. He tugged her back in. "Geneviève has much to offer. Money, connections..."

"Yes, you looked very interested in her _connections_."

"Jealous?"

She just scoffed. As they lapsed into silence she glanced around the room, sharp eyes cataloguing people in the crowd. She'd always had good instincts for espionage, and Waverly had trained her as best he could while evading notice of the Stasi, but she'd had a lot of raw edges when they first worked together. In Indonesia she'd come a long way. Now she seemed even better.

"I think Geneviève is trying to play matchmaker," Gaby broke the silence to say, staring at something over his shoulder. "With us."

"Yeah, she does have a weakness for that sort of thing. Surprisingly romantic, given the sorts of people she deals with. How do you want to handle that?"

Gaby's eyes flicked back to him. Then she returned to staring past his shoulder. "Let's hope it doesn't become a problem."

"You really know how to flatter a guy."

* * *

Two weeks later, Napoleon still hadn't fully sussed out Gaby's mission, other than that it involved Geneviève somehow, since Gaby seemed firmly implanted in her social circle. Watching Gaby work from a professional distance was different than in Indonesia. That had almost been like old times, or as near as possible, both testing the edges of the empty space where Illya should have been between them. Now, though, they were at odds. To keep up appearances, they were polite with each other, even friendly when prompted by Geneviève, and did their best to stay out of each other's way. In doing so, Napoleon got to watch Gaby work, schmoozing and boozing at cocktail parties and dinners. She was good at this. Far better than Illya had ever been, though Illya had had his own sort of awkward charm.

But one day at a luncheon, Gaby was off her game. It was subtle, Napoleon doubted Geneviève noticed while they were laughing and chatting, but Napoleon recognized the frustrated crease in Gaby's brow that settled in whenever she thought no one was looking. A few times he'd turned to find her staring at him, scowling and glancing away when he locked eyes with her. Something was wrong. What, though, he had no idea.

"She's pretty, isn't she?" murmured Geneviève, catching Napoleon by surprise as she also caught him looking across the room to Gaby, though he'd been trying to puzzle out what had gotten into her rather than admiring her beauty.

"Do you think?" he replied vaguely.

Geneviève eyed him. "You've changed, Jack. Ten years ago you'd have already gone to bed with her, or at least made an attempt. You know, if I weren't married now, I'd be a touch hurt. You've had your eye on her ever since you got here."

Mostly Napoleon had been keeping an eye on Gaby because as cooperative as they'd been in Indonesia, he had absolute confidence that if needed to advance her mission now, she'd throw him under the bus. He'd do the same, after all. Still, he couldn't tell Geneviève that.

"And if you weren't married now I'd..." he began gamely, though his heart wasn't much in it.

"Oh, stop flirting." Geneviève patted him on the cheek. "It's sweet, but you're changing the subject. You know, she watches you too."

"I doubt that very much."

"You doubt me?"

"Not in the slightest. But I doubt your objectivity, given how you've been trying to set me up with her ever since I arrived. Still the hopeless romantic." Napoleon grinned, his gentle teasing the resumption of an old joke between them about Geneviève's more sentimental side.

"You know me all too well," she returned with her own grin before inclining her head towards something past Napoleon's shoulder. "Oh, but perhaps I'm not wrong this time."

On the pretense of turning to give his empty glass to a passing waiter, Napoleon glanced behind himself to find Gaby circling towards them. Holding his gaze, she gave him a meaningful look, then changed course to slip off down the hall.

"Well?" prompted Geneviève, her expression one which permitted no argument, so Napoleon excused himself to follow Gaby.

As he turned the corner around which she vanished, which seemed to lead to a service hallway to the kitchens, Gaby was leaning back against the wall, her chin tipping up to hold eye contact when he stepped in front of her.

"Okay, I'm here now," he said. "What is it?"

"Geneviève is growing suspicious."

"Of what?"

"Us. She keeps trying to...nudge us together. She doesn't understand why we haven't done this yet. It's conspicuous."

"By 'done this' you mean...?"

Where before Gaby had just looked faintly irked, she now seemed truly peeved, like Napoleon had just demanded she recite a dirty poem instead of just wanting to know the reason for their impromptu meeting. He wasn't being obtuse for the sole purpose of baiting her, but she wasn't being honest with him and he wasn't above needling her for it.

"Fucked," she retorted, drolly acidic, the way she used to get when trying to shock Illya by saying something base. It had rarely worked on Napoleon back then and didn't now.

"So you came here to fuck me?"

"Of course n—"

"Because I'm not opposed, I just need to know what I'm in for. Handjob? Blowj—?"

"No." Gaby's scowl deepened as she shifted uneasily. She'd never had much taste for such baseness being returned at her. "You know what I mean, stop being difficult. Let's just...just kiss me."

Napoleon stared at her for a moment. She seemed on edge, but far more so than she should've been if this were just about kissing him to get Geneviève off their backs. "Okay, I'm still not opposed," which was true, he'd done that plenty of times for the job, "but are you sure?"

Gaby's gaze suddenly flicked down the hall. "She's watching," she hissed before pressing on the back of his neck, both urging him down and levering herself up in one motion, pressing her mouth to his. Napoleon only froze for half a second before giving a mental shrug and following her lead, trying to remind himself that this shouldn't have been any different than all of the other people he'd kissed for work. It shouldn't have mattered that these were _Gaby's_ nails digging into his nape, her body pressing against his, her hip warm under his hand when he tentatively reached for her.

(It shouldn't have mattered that he'd spent so long not letting himself think about this, imagine it. Not since he'd first understood the inescapable trajectory of Illya's orbit around her and known any such thoughts would only lead to ruin.)

As if sensing his distraction and needing to punish him for it, she nipped him, hard, his lower lip snared between her teeth, punching a shocked grunt from him, his hips unconsciously bucking towards hers. Her legs shifted, settling on either side of one of his thighs, as she released a tiny, whisper-faint sigh that seeped out alongside her breath, too quiet for anyone to hear but him. Something she had no reason to fake. Experimentally, he leaned into her a bit more, and she sighed again, throaty, low.

He couldn't keep doing this. It was too real, too dangerously close to being something that might have an actual meaning which he couldn't deal with now.

"Gaby—" He pulled back, trying to read her expression, unsure what he hoped to find.

She glared back, unflinching, even as her cheeks turned pink. For nowhere near the first time Napoleon admired the sheer nerve of her.

"She's gone now," Gaby declared, setting a hand on his chest to create room between them then retreating down the hall before he could respond.

* * *

The rest of the day Gaby wouldn't so much as look at him. It was fine. Napoleon was a professional, he understood she'd done it to solidify her cover; it had probably even helped his own. A few images of Illya's bare back rolling out of bed and turning to leave kept trying to demand Napoleon's attention. He pushed them back down with ruthless swiftness. He didn't need anyone to stay. He never had anyone before which made U.N.C.L.E. a blip, an anomaly. Illya and Gaby hadn't changed anything for him.

Back at his hotel suite late that night he was settling in for what he kept telling himself wasn't a wallow in self-pity when a knock sounded at the door. He wasn't expecting anyone so he sighed then hauled himself up, checked his pistol, scanned the room for strategic cover should a fight break out, then went to peer through the peephole. After a moment he yanked the door open.

"What took you so long?" Gaby asked as she pushed past him, not waiting for an invitation.

"What took me so long? You've been giving me the cold shoulder since lunch.”

"Nice suite." Gaby kicked her heels off with a relieved groan, toes curling into the plush ivory carpet as she strode to the centre of the room. "Are you working tonight?"

"No, Geneviève is spending the night with her husband, you know that. I'm laying low, same as you."

With a considering noise Gaby looked back at him, eyes narrowing. After a moment she was on the go again, searching through his room. There was something odd to her manner, bruised and restless, seemingly unable to stay still. She spied the bottle of Glenmorangie single-malt that Napoleon had intended to spend the night with and beelined for it, but then paused to scrutinize the label, something that he'd never seen her do. She might have been fussy about many things, cars, food, but he hadn't known her to care much about how she got drunk.

"There's a cabinet." Napoleon gestured to the wet bar in the far corner of the room. "If you're looking for something else?"

Seeming to only just remember his presence, Gaby scowled, then opened the Scotch and took a swig, meeting his eyes in blatant challenge the entire time. Despite the theft, Napoleon had to suppress a grin. That was more like the Gaby he knew; defiant little shit.

"C'mon, if you're going to steal my booze you can at least share." Walking over, Napoleon stretched out a hand, waiting out the second Gaby stared like she wanted to fight him on it before she rolled her eyes, shoved the bottle into his grasp and stalked away.

"How have you been?" she asked, perching on the sofa.

She'd come just to make small talk? Also something he'd never known her to have much patience for. But she still seemed out of sorts so he chose to go along with her strange mood for the time being.

"Nothing new since this afternoon."

"No, I mean...I should've called you. After Indonesia."

He shrugged, sitting on the other end of the sofa. "We were both busy."

They traded the bottle in silence for a few minutes, Gaby grasping little tufts of the carpet between her toes before pulling her legs up under herself, getting comfortable. Whenever it was his turn to drink she kept staring at him with such intense focus that Napoleon struggled to feign nonchalance. Distracting himself as her eyes bored into his skin again, he took another drink, right as she started to speak.

"Do you want to have sex?"

Napoleon choked, alcohol scalding his throat and the back of his nose, reducing him to a fit of wheezing for a good ten seconds, his eyes watering as he regained control of his lungs.

"Excuse me?" he croaked.

Gaby made a sour face. "Never mind, I shouldn't have said anything. You've never wanted—"

"Where is this coming from?"

Suddenly she wasn't looking at him anymore. Her shoulders went rigid. "Why do you care? I just want to."

This confirmed Napoleon's hunch. Something was wrong, but she'd rather pull her own teeth than talk about it. He couldn't even say he blamed her, given that he felt the same.

"Well?" she prompted, irritated enough that Napoleon suspected this would be her last offer. So he looked at her then, actually _looked_ at her properly for the first time in years. When they'd first met he'd avoided doing this. She'd been a bit young for him then, not so much that he'd felt bad about noticing her but enough that he'd kept a very careful check on his interactions with her. He might have been a slut, as Sanders never failed to remind him, but he wasn't a pervy old man. That was half of it. The other reason he'd never let himself look? That was all Illya.

But Illya wasn't there anymore.

( _Never again,_ his brain reminded him before he told it to shut the hell up.)

Nor was Gaby twenty-four anymore. She was—he thought for a moment—she would be turning thirty next year, how the hell had that happened? And there was nothing girlish about the way she'd just propositioned him. It was without question the most laughably unsexy come-on he'd ever received, but this, too, was all Gaby, no-nonsense down to her very bones, and from her it was far more endearing than he'd ever willingly admit. She was gorgeous, too, same as ever. Those big brown eyes, even as they now glared in annoyance, had always been a weak spot for him.

"Yeah, sure," he finally said.

Gaby blinked. "What?"

"Yes, I will have sex with you."

"Wow, very charming."

"You're the one who just opened with 'do you want to have sex?'. I don't think you have the whole 'charming' thing cornered." He eyed her. "You want to go dancing or something first?" he asked because she still looked more edgy than aroused and he couldn't quite suss out how to ease into it.

She scoffed like he was being obtuse. "If I wanted to go dancing I'd ask you dancing." Then she shuffled across the couch on her knees, not pandering to him with any seductive moves, just presenting herself as she was and having confidence that it would be enough. And it was. God, it was.

They didn't make it off the sofa the first time, her riding him hard and fast until they both fell apart. She was bossy as all hell, which in retrospect he should've anticipated, but he was adaptable and it was a nice change after all of the spoiled rich people he'd screwed lately, who mostly just laid there and let him do all the work. After Gaby climbed off him she began freeing herself from her dress as she wandered over to the bed. Despite her obvious efforts at poise, and the complete lack of praise she'd given him, her legs were a little wobbly. Napoleon grinned at that. He sauntered over to join her, shedding what remained of his own clothes, settling back against the pillows to let her clamber back into his lap, his grin growing at the rosy flush on her cheeks. Cupping a hand around the back of her head, he belatedly stopped to kiss her for the first time, gentle. Then he pulled back, thumb stroking her cheek.

"Hey," he murmured, his voice coming out warmer than he'd meant it.

She bit her lip, not looking at him.

"Hey, you okay?"

"Don't," she snapped, tossing her head to dislodge his touch.

"Sorry, I was just—Sorry." Hastily, he withdrew his hands. He didn't mean to... This was just supposed to be sex. That was what she'd asked for upfront. He'd just forgotten himself for a moment.

But at his docility Gaby turned more frustrated. "Will you just stop being so, so...nice?" she demanded, more desperate than commanding, her head shaking again. "I didn't think you—Just fuck me, okay? This isn't..."

"Gaby, what's going on?"

"You're not listening," she growled. "That's not—Look, I just can't do gentle right now. It's not—"

She ground down, hard, almost brutal, causing him to buck up against her before he could stop the instinct. He grunted, forcing himself to go still.

"No," he insisted when she tried to repeat the motion, taking her by the hips and lifting just enough so that she couldn't gain any friction.

Her nostrils flared. "No? What do you mean, _no_? Come on, fuck me you fucking—"

"Not until you tell me what's wrong."

"Oh my God, you are such an asshole," she muttered, managing, even though she was naked atop him, to sound rather peevish. After she'd had her fill of glowering and huffing at him she stopped fighting his hold on her hips, sitting back on his thighs, her head tipping back as she blinked up at the ceiling. "It just reminds me of..." There was more to the sentence but she dropped to such a low mumble it was lost to him.

"Reminds you of what?"

Gaby bit her lip again. He'd been expecting more fire, more murderous looks and sharp words, but then she blinked again, eyes shining, teeth gnawing at her lip hard enough to blanche it white. "It reminds me of _Illya_ , okay?"

Stunned, Napoleon stared at her, blurting out, "Wait, when did you two—?" before realizing how intrusive a question it was.

"I don't want to talk about it." Then she scoffed. "God, I'm so stupid, thinking he wouldn't come up if I went to you."

"Is that what this is about?" Her strange attitude was starting to fit together and Napoleon didn't like the picture it made. "Some rebound thing to get over him? Why now?"

"No, that's not—" With a frustrated noise she crawled off him, grabbing his shirt from where he'd tossed it on the bed and draping it over her shoulders. "I just wanted...Have you seen him recently? Past few months?"

The last few pieces slotted into place in Napoleon's head, and _oh_ , he'd never even thought about how that would affect her.

"Not recently," he replied carefully, unsure just how much she knew and not wanting to tip his hand too soon. "You?"

"I ran into him in the spring. April." Gaby turned away, as if to climb off the bed, but then stayed seated on the edge, her back to him.

Napoleon did some mental math. Didn't like the result one bit. No wonder she looked like she was being torn into little pieces from the inside out. "Oh. How is he d—?"

"Did you know he got married?"

There it was. Did he know Illya got married? There were many things Napoleon knew. He followed the lives of his former partners from afar, as best he could without attracting too much attention. So he knew that Illya had married one Nadezhda Kirillovna Polushina in May. Nadezhda Kirillovna _Kuryakina_ , now, he supposed. He knew she was a Muscovite, daughter of a Central Committee member, as close to royalty as one could be in Russia these days. Born 13 July, 1941.

Only then, staring at the impassable cliff of Gaby's back, did it occur to Napoleon that Illya's young wife was not much older than Gaby had been when they had first met her. From the file photo his source had sent over, same brown hair and dark eyes, too. He wondered whether any of them would ever stop chasing each other's shadows.

But another thing he knew was that Gaby would have her own sources and wouldn't need him to tell her all of that. And he also knew that while he had no answer to her question that could make anything better, there were some answers which could make things much worse.

"Really? When?" he asked.

"Six months ago. I just found out today." Gaby's hands spasmed around the bedsheets on either side of her hips, wringing them into stormy discord, as her voice turned hoarse, hollow. "He got her pregnant."

Napoleon's eyebrows made a leap for freedom. His Russian sources were good but hers must've been better because he did _not_ know that.

Gaby turned to regard his surprise then snorted, nothing amused in the sound. "So of course he had to do the noble thing and marry her. The good thing. God, so fucking _stupid_ ," she hissed, but Napoleon wasn't sure she was talking about Illya anymore.

"Are you o—?" he began before stopping, knowing the question was pointless. She wasn't okay. Nothing about this entire situation was okay. The two of them were both still unable to let go of a man they could never be with. That it was the same man made the whole thing almost darkly comedic. Illya was just that good of a person. He drew them both in, and now they sat here together, both grieving whatever they'd had with him at the same time they found each other.

"He and I hooked up," Napoleon confessed softly, knowing their experiences with Illya weren't the same but wanting her to know they'd both been hurt by him, as unintentional as it might have been for Illya. "Two years ago."

Now it was Gaby's turn for surprise. Her eyes landed on him, still hurt but newly curious. "Hooked up? Like—?"

"Yeah." He met her gaze, daring her to judge him, uncertain how to feel when instead she simply looked like she'd had a hunch confirmed. "And then he freaked out and ran away. Let me tell you, that really makes a guy feel great about himself." An abortive chuckle attempted to get up his windpipe, but got lodged halfway through. He cleared his throat. "He, um, told me to say 'hi' to you, for what it's worth. I'd forgotten that until now." Then he shook his head in morbid, self-loathing amusement. "God, he must've been over the moon to see you."

"What's that mean?"

"C'mon, you were everything to him. Never seen a guy so in lo—infatuated."

Gaby scoffed, self-deprecating. "Can't have meant much to him if he turned around and married some woman a month after we..."

Suddenly it occurred to Napoleon that in the three years it took Illya to move on, no doubt reluctantly, and get married, Napoleon himself had slept with enough women that he'd have to stop and count to recall the number. Yet even if he'd gotten every one of them pregnant, he suspected that Gaby wouldn't look as quietly devastated as she did now.

(It was possible he was still a touch bitter about her and Illya.)

Then she roused herself from her torpor, shuffling back up the bed to face him. "So I'm done. I'm done being hung up on him after all of these years. And aren't you, too?"

She looked tiny kneeling there, nude but for his shirt dwarfing her body, but there was fresh fire in her eyes, determination in her posture. That same fire and determination Napoleon remembered from so long ago in East Berlin, right before she'd stepped up with him and they'd done the impossible together. This, at long last, was the Gaby he knew.

Later, when she was wild above him, hot around him, swearing at him to once again stop being so fucking gentle, Napoleon gazed up at her for a long moment. If he were a better person maybe he'd stop them here and talk about it some more. But he wasn't, and he suspected that Gaby sought him out because she knew that. So he flipped them, driving into her hard enough to rip a filthy moan from her chest, her nails scrabbling for purchase before lashing down his back. He grunted but took the pain, suffering Illya's penance for him.

In the shower the next morning, after having seen Gaby off early to return to her own hotel, Napoleon stepped under the hot water and hissed as the spray stung his back. Throughout the day, the shift of his shirt over his shoulder blades made him wince.

He didn't regret it at all.

### 1967 - December

As Illya stood at the window of his flat in Moscow, listening to New Year's revelers holler on the street below, he took a moment to ponder just how much his life had changed in a year. He didn't need to look far to find such changes. His son, now a week old, was cradled in his arms. Illya hadn't been allowed to hold him at the hospital all week, only today when they'd arrived home had he done this for the first time, and it was terrifying, such a fragile little human sleeping softly, breaths puffing against the skin of Illya's arm. He hadn't made all of the right choices this year, but he supposed that none of that mattered in the end because all of those choices had probably, one way or another, brought him here, so dwelling on the past was now pointless.

(He swallowed and refused to think about what he'd suggested for their son's name. Nadya had liked his choice but he hadn't shared his reasons for it. She wouldn't understand, couldn't know.)

He glanced out the window, watching fluffy snow drift down from the low grey clouds. Then he turned down in time to see his son's face wrinkle up in a tiny grimace, yawning, before the boy settled back to sleep, peaceful, perfect. For a brief moment he wished Solo and Gaby could meet him. But then he recalled one late night at some safehouse when the three of them, after an hour of drinking, had somehow landed on the topic of parenthood. Solo had seemed ambivalent, but Gaby had been vehement: she didn't want children. Ever. Illya remembered the sour hurt that had curled in his chest at her words and remembered staying silent, feeling too tender to expose his hopes, too disappointed by her choices even though he'd had no right to such feelings.

No, it was best this way. Gaby and Solo had been fleeting, tenuous presences, waves cresting on the beach of his life, coming closer, retreating, but impossible to arrest upon the sand and keep for himself. Now he could see no place for them. He had a wife now. A son. No room for whatever Gaby and Solo had once been to him.

### 1968 - March

Springtime in London was dreadful. The rain was cold, and when it wasn't raining it was still chilly and washed-out. If Napoleon were being reasonable he'd be in Tokyo right now. Tokyo had, in his opinion, the most pleasant spring in the world; warm and fragrant with cherry blossoms. Yet here he was in London, and it was raining. Of course. Telling himself he was being ridiculous, he stared at the nondescript door of the house in front of him. Then he knocked.

For a while nothing happened. Long enough that he began to berate himself because he was so ridiculous he didn't even call ahead. But just as he was preparing to turn tail, the door opened.

"Hey," he offered.

Gaby squinted at him as if attempting to convince herself he was actually there but not quite succeeding. "What are you doing here?"

"I was in town," he told her, which was not the whole truth. "You look good, Gabs," he added, which was the truth. Yes, she appeared to be in her pyjamas, but it was always true with her, he just rarely told her so because back in the U.N.C.L.E. days he'd never been sure if Illya would take his head off for it, and on the rare occasion he risked that Gaby never took the compliment well anyways.

Sure enough, Gaby now rolled her eyes. "I didn't hear you were being assigned here. You should have called."

Napoleon shrugged. "Can I come in?"

"I'm going into the office in a little while."

"I'll only stay a little while."

Eyes narrowing again, Gaby didn't move, letting this stretch out just long enough to make him doubt whether she'd slam the door in his face or not. Then she pivoted and disappeared into the house, leaving the door open behind her. He stepped through and locked it behind himself, following the sound of her footsteps down a narrow hall, past a sitting room, a bathroom, a kitchen, into what had to be her bedroom, the door to which she'd also left open. This appeared to be her entire living space; the upper floor of the house must have been another flat.

"Nice place," he said, gazing around her bedroom. It was cluttered, which he'd expected from her, and the wallpaper was some dreadful, dingy old stuff which couldn't have been her taste. Knowing her, the way she hated waste, she'd probably not seen the sense in replacing something for purely aesthetic reasons.

Gaby snorted but paid him little mind, puttering around to grab a few different dresses from a small pile on the bed, holding them up along her front, not soliciting his opinion, before choosing a bright red one and tossing the others back, pausing to give him a look until he turned to face the wall.

"How long are you here for?" she asked past the faint rustle of clothes.

"A week," he replied to the dreadful wallpaper. "You working?"

"Today and tomorrow. I should have some time off later in the week." She paused, her next words coming out muffled as she pulled the dress over her head. "We'll be waiting on some things to come in." She didn't need to spell out that, in this context, 'things' meant intel. Their countries may have been allies but relations weren't quite cozy enough to speak freely about sensitive work, especially with all of the mole scares that had gone on in the past few years. "Can you...?"

Napoleon turned around, did the zip of her dress up, then leaned on the edge of her dressing table while she sat to do her makeup. "How've you been?" he asked as she settled into her routine. They'd often chatted in the mornings like this in U.N.C.L.E., before they'd both gotten caught up in their rivalry over Illya and such friendliness had crumbled away, and there was something comforting about watching her go through the motions. Same as ever, she started with powder, focused on her reflection and answering him absently.

"Fine. Busy with work. The usual. You?"

"Busy too." He fell silent when she reached for the eyeliner, since she'd always told him to be quiet and stop distracting her for this part. Her hand stayed steady as she drew on the inky curves, carefully swooping the right then left eye into perfect wings. He'd forgotten how impressive that was; he'd probably take his own eye out if he tried to do the same.

After she finished the eyeliner Gaby glanced up at him, frowning. "Why are you...smiling like that?"

Was he? He didn't even realize. He made himself look away, cleared his throat. "Nothing. Just thinking that nothing ever changes. We're both always busy." Even though he kept his eyes on the floor somewhere to his right, he could feel her stare lingering on his face.

"I'm seeing someone," she blurted out, making Napoleon whip back to look at her, confused by the timing of this declaration, apropos of nothing. She shifted like she wanted to glance away, but met his gaze, raising her chin in a dare to make something of this.

"Okay." Napoleon let his eyes do a quick sweep of the bedroom, which was messy, but all Gaby. No trace of anyone else's things. "That's great. What're they like?"

"He's...he's fine. He's nice," she corrected herself, turning back to the mirror to finish her makeup. "Do you want to get dinner or something while you're here?"

"Sure." Dinner as the third wheel with Gaby and her boyfriend sounded hellish, but surely if he could survive being tortured by her uncle he could survive this, which was not something he could say for many other social invitations.

Her lips pulled into a broad 'O' while she did her lipstick, Gaby just grunted in agreement. Then she bowed her lips together, rolling them around for a moment. "I've got to run," she told him as she swiped at the top edge of her lip with a fingertip, finessing some imperfection which hadn't been apparent to his eye. "Tonight, seven?"

* * *

Gaby's suggested restaurant was a cozy little place just a few blocks off Carnaby Street, Napoleon arriving first to find it much more intimate than he'd expected. She, too, seemed to have forgotten the secluded ambiance, based on her furtive frown as she glanced around, joining him a few minutes later. No boyfriend in tow. She'd only made reservations for two.

Settling in, looking over the menus and ordering drinks, a stilted distance hovered between them. It was strange. They'd bunked together, shared beds. Once she'd even shared a too-narrow couch with him, pressing herself up along his front, both so exhausted that they'd fallen into a dead sleep within minutes. He'd made her breakfast, the two of them still in their pyjamas, in more than one dingy safehouse. By this point, with Illya long gone, he knew her better than he knew anyone else on this earth. Yet they'd never done this. Something which Napoleon was struggling to find an appropriate name for without calling it a 'date'.

With the setting so public they couldn't talk about work, leaving the conversation to flounder until their drinks arrived. But then Napoleon made some comment about the quality of his whiskey and Gaby, after taking a sip, launched off a passionate discussion about their preferred brands, which gradually slipped into talking about current events. After that the conversation flowed effortlessly. So many years removed they'd mostly gotten used to Illya's absence. Still, there was a laugh missing when Napoleon made some foolish joke, a lack of grumbly bickering, a few empty spaces in the conversation which both he and Gaby seemed to expect a third voice to fill. Despite that, Napoleon was astonished, by the time they'd finished dessert and he looked at his watch, to see two hours had gone by so quickly.

After dinner she invited him back to her house, the two of them climbing out of a cab, heading for the front door when a guy emerged from the next house over and waved, hurrying down the steps to join them on the sidewalk.

"Hey, Sabine," he called, beaming at Gaby. "Wasn't sure if you got my note..."

"Oh, yes, I did," Gaby replied, her smile not quite so bright. "Sorry, I've been busy with work and—"

"Yeah, yeah, no worries." The guy bit his lip, eyeing Napoleon. "Who's this, then?"

"He's an old friend. We used to work together. He's just in town for a bit and I thought I'd show him around."

Napoleon offered his hand. "Jack Devony," he introduced himself as he gave the guy a more thorough look over; he was white, mid-twenties, scruffy red hair and beard, skinny, with knobby elbows. Nice smile. Bit of a twitchy air but seemingly harmless.

"Clive Dennison," the guy provided before proceeding to ignore him in favour of turning back to Gaby. "Listen, I just got some concert tickets for this weekend and, I dunno, I was thinking you might want to come along? It's Saturday. Saturday night. I mean, you don't have to, I just figured..."

Clive trailed off, while Gaby began to make some polite but vague excuse. But Clive was still looking at her with a hopeful, faintly awestruck gaze, and surely, surely to _God_ this wasn't what Gaby meant when she'd said she was seeing someone. Yet she kept eyeing Napoleon, then eyeing Clive, like she was watching two unfamiliar dogs, waiting for a scuffle to break out, all while shifting on her feet as if itching to tug one of them along before anyone's hackles went up.

"—I'm just not sure when," Gaby was saying when Napoleon had shaken himself out of glaring at Clive long enough to pay attention.

"Yeah, 'course, no worries," Clive repeated again, making Napoleon's teeth grind together. Then Clive reached forward, setting a hand on Gaby's shoulder. "I know you're busy with your job. But don't work too hard, yeah? You've gotta have a life."

"I'll do my best," Gaby replied with what was, to Napoleon's ears, blatant false cheer, but which Clive seemed to take for genuine. "Anyways, you were just heading out, yes?"

Thankfully Clive got the hint, giving Gaby a friendly farewell, Napoleon a more reserved one, then strolling down the street as Gaby headed for her front door.

To his credit, Napoleon waited until they were inside before he blurted out, "Well, Clive seems...friendly."

"Oh my God, could you just _not_?" Gaby groaned, collapsing into an armchair in the sitting room and burying her face in her hands.

"What? I just said he was friendly."

"Bullshit."

Napoleon stayed silent as he sat on the sofa, opposite her chair, and pondered how much he could get away with. "So..."

" _Don't_."

Apparently what he could currently get away with was 'not much'.

Then Gaby sighed, hauling herself up and rummaging through a cabinet until she produced a bottle of liquor, sloshing a couple of fingers of something amber into two glasses, one of which was shoved into his hand.

"Getting me drunk, Miss Teller?"

"Getting myself drunk so I can put up with you." She took a swig, gave him a glare, then flopped onto the other end of the sofa, making a little whirlpool of the liquor in her glass by swirling it around.

"You know I'm the last person to judge you," he offered with a shrug before shuddering. "I slept with Victoria Vinciguerra, so I don't think I have the moral high ground here."

"You had to do that, it's a free pass."

He hesitated for a moment. "It wasn't...I didn't have to sleep with her. Those weren't my orders. But the C.I.A., once they realized it was something I was good at, and when..." he grimaced, "when Sanders realized I was...flexible about it, he decided it was the fastest way for me to solve a lot of problems. So, I don't know, by the time I got to Victoria I just let it happen rather than look for a different way to do things."

Gaby swirled her drink again, fixated on the whirling amber. "I slept with a target last year. Not under orders. I just...I'd been undercover so long. Six months, something like that, running solo in enemy territory. I was all alone and I just needed..."

"Human connection, right?" He knew the feeling all too well, that hollowness deep in the marrow of a person's bones, when they'd spent so long burying themselves, and so long under the constant, looming threat of exposure.

She nodded. "Yeah."

"Does Clive help with that?"

"At first he did. I don't know anymore. I told him it was just sex, nothing else, but I think he's still hoping it will turn into something more. I just started the whole thing because he was...easy. Or at least he was, at first." When Napoleon's eyebrows went up Gaby snorted. "Not easy like _that_. He just doesn't challenge me on stuff."

"That's what you want? Someone who doesn't challenge you?" he asked, puzzled, comparing this assertion to the memory of their one night together in Monaco, the way she'd fought him like a wild thing, clawed and scratched his back, goaded him into _harder, faster_ until he was certain he'd broken her, only to have her demand _more, again._ Then he thought of another memory, of the way Illya would get into those moods sometimes, the playful, even flirtatious ones, never letting Gaby get too smug in her hold over him.

Gaby just shrugged. Then she tipped back the rest of her drink before slumping, her head flopping along the top of the sofa, obviously finished with conversation. He watched her, not the poised secret agent, not the fearless mechanic, in this moment emptied of those false fronts, existing as herself and nothing more. He tried to think of how many people he'd let see him like that, realizing that it had probably been her, Illya, and no one else in the past decade of his life. A lonely thought. But if he were to be lonely, he could imagine far worse company than them.

* * *

The next night Gaby asked to meet him at her house and then go out together, so at the appropriate time Napoleon strode up the sidewalk, frowning as the front door of the next house over opened.

"Evening, Clive," Napoleon offered with more politeness than enthusiasm.

"Jack! You're back," proclaimed Clive with a pasted-on smile. "I was just popping round to see Sabine, actually." He produced a bouquet of flowers, the stems tucked under his arm. "She's been working a lot lately so I thought I'd give her a little something to cheer her up. Maybe go for a drink."

"Right." Making it up the stairs to Gaby's front door before Clive, Napoleon stared down at him on the sidewalk, scruffy in his blue jeans, the bouquet a touch rumpled from his careless hold. Napoleon puffed up ever so slightly. He was wearing his favourite suit, charcoal grey, the cut just tight enough to show off his figure without trying too hard. Checking his watch, he found himself a few minutes early to meet Gaby, so he leaned against the door frame. "So, what's she been working on that's kept her so busy?" he asked Clive mildly, curious to get more insight into whatever fake life Gaby had invented for the guy.

"Writing a piece about Poland for _The Telegraph_." Clive laughed, the sound a bit too biting for pure humour. "God, I figured she'd be all eager to talk business with you. She didn't say anything?"

"Nope. Mostly reminisced."

"That's right, you two worked together, eh?"

"Yeah, we did." Building on the information he'd gleaned, he leaned into Gaby's chosen cover. "Foreign correspondents, we traveled together, worked together, the whole nine yards. For about a year."

"S'funny, cos she's never mentioned you."

Napoleon felt his eyebrows bob up. He hadn't expected the kid to have the nerve. "It was a while ago," he offered, carefully neutral. "Besides, she's always been very private. She probably just didn't think to tell you."

"She tells me plenty. Once you get to really _know_ her."

Ten seconds ago Napoleon had been willing to let this go, to let Clive have his fun, but the implication that he somehow knows Gaby better makes something prickle in Napoleon.

"So, you know her pretty well?" he drawled, baiting the simplest trap he'd ever set.

"Yeah."

"Interesting choice, then, getting her carnations." Napoleon jerked his head towards the bouquet. "Given how much she hates them."

To Clive's credit, he only deflated for a second before bristling up again. "Well, how am I supposed to know that?"

Napoleon blinked. "How do you think I figured it out? I _talked_ to her. Should've gone with dahlias instead. Those big ones with all the extra petals. Or sunflowers. Anything oversized with bright colours. No pink."

Warily, Clive squinted up at him. "Are you in love with her or something?"

"What? No. Jesus Christ, I'm trying to help you." He was, wasn't he? Napoleon wasn't entirely sure anymore. "Anyways," he grunted, "the point is you should beat it, before she sees those damn carnations."

Fortunately Clive left, crumpled carnations and all. As Napoleon knocked at Gaby's door and held her purse while she found her coat, he said nothing about Clive. At dinner Gaby talked for twenty minutes about cars. Napoleon listened to every word.

* * *

The next evening the rain drummed on the windows of Gaby's house as she told Napoleon to get himself a drink before disappearing back to her bedroom. He wandered into the sitting room, finding some decent whiskey in a cabinet and helping himself, swirling the liquor in his glass absently while he wandered around the room, which was largely devoid of personal touches, but for a photo on the mantle, which Napoleon leaned closer to investigate. It was a framed shot of two men walking down a street, their shoulders nearly touching, their backs to the camera. But then, squinting at it, the air went still in Napoleon's chest.

Him and Illya.

Nothing was readily identifiable about them. Their faces were hidden, and many tall men wore flat caps and leather jackets, many shorter men wool overcoats above pinstriped trousers. Yet Napoleon recognized that street, a little alley off a market square in Naples, where they'd been mopping up a stray branch of the Vinciguerra organization. It'd been their last day in the city, after the mission was wrapped up but before they could get a plane back to London in the morning, so they'd had a chance, for once, to play tourists. He vaguely recalled Gaby snatching Peril's camera, darting around to snap photos of street cats and flower boxes. She must've taken this one, too, when he and Illya had gotten ahead of her.

"Making yourself at h—?"

Caught out, Napoleon whipped around to find Gaby staring not at him but at the photo in his hand, her expression blank.

"Sorry, I wasn't—" Snooping? He was. "I've never seen this before," he said instead. "Didn't realize you had it."

Gaby shook her head, walking over to take the picture from her hand and set it carefully back on the mantle in just the right spot. "I didn't think any of those photos would turn out. But Illya developed the roll and gave me this print. He said he liked the composition."

"That's high praise from him."

She snorted. "He also said the exposure was awful, and that he had to spend ages working to salvage anything. Told me a bunch of stuff about burning and contrast filters, I don't remember what." She reached for the frame once more, her fingers trailing along its top edge, as if trying to find Illya's touch in this object he once held. Then she turned away, taking the whiskey bottle to the couch and plopping down.

"What do you think Peril's doing now?" Napoleon pondered.

Gaby glanced at her watch. "It's late now in Moscow. He's probably asleep." Her lip curled, ever so slightly. "With his wife."

"Yeah," Napoleon sighed. He picked his way over to the couch, the effort of standing suddenly more than he felt like enduring. "Thought we said we were going to stop being hung up on him."

"I'm _not_." Gaby had sprawled on the sofa somewhere between the far side and the middle, taking up an amount of space that would have been impolite if they weren't beyond politeness with each other. "I still can't believe he has a kid."

Napoleon puffed out a breath of air. "Yeah. Yeah, Jesus, me neither. I mean, who would've guessed that between me and him, he'd be the one to knock someone up? Statistically speaking, I don't think that's how it should've gone down."

His attempt at dark humour worked, provoking an amused noise from Gaby before she went solemn again.

"How old would...?" She squinted into the air. She had always had the better head for numbers, so he just let her think. "Four months. Almost five, actually."

"Wow." Napoleon stared at the far wall, trying to imagine Illya with a kid. His imaginings ran into immediate difficulty when he couldn't picture a five-month-old child; he hadn't spent enough time around children to know how that number translated into real life. Without better information, his mind conjured a vague picture of a pudgy baby with wispy blond hair and blue eyes, the image never fully solidifying. But one thing he knew for certain.

"Illya must be a great dad."

"Yeah," Gaby agreed without hesitation. "He would be."

Napoleon glanced at Gaby then, finding her also staring into the middle distance. He was pretty sure that she didn't fully understand just how _gentle_ Illya had been with her. She'd mostly just seemed annoyed whenever Illya showed any overt softness to her, as if she'd be thought weak if she didn't respond with thorny irritation. But Napoleon had seen it from the sidelines. He'd envied it; more than anything else, more than the casual touches Illya would give her, or the restrained longing, he'd just wished that instead of treating him to back-slapping, gruff, repressed masculine comradeship, Illya had offered _him_ some of that softness.

"He's probably not doing field missions anymore, now that he has a family," Gaby murmured, bringing him away from his thoughts. Reading the space between her words, Napoleon realized she was right; that neither of them were likely to ever run into Illya again.

"He's probably cut back," Napoleon conceded, debating offering some false optimism to her before remembering that she was better at seeing through his lies than almost anyone else he'd ever met.

She worried her lower lip for a silent moment, still staring at the wall. "You're not here on assignment, are you?" she asked then, quiet.

"I...nah," he responded after a pause. "I just...I don't know. I had a week off and I didn't want to spend it alone." And she'd been the only person on the planet he could think of to spend the time with, but he didn't feel ready to tell her this. "Sorry, I shouldn't have co—"

"No, it's okay." Then she made a self-deprecating noise. "Not like I had any big plans this week."

"You've got Clive. And his concert tickets."

With a groan Gaby flopped against the back of the sofa. "That's not how it is with him and you know it, so I don't know why you keep bringing him up."

"I just wasn't expecting you to date someone like..."

"Like _what_?" Gaby asked, sharp.

Napoleon's hands wandered into the air as he tried to think of a way to explain the writhing feeling he got in his chest when he thought of Gaby with that kid, who didn't even know her real name, who hadn't bothered to learn anything about her.

"Oh my God," she gasped, "you're _jealous._ "

"What? No, No. That isn't—"

"You do not get the right to just show up here after six months and be jealous. Actually, you don't have the right to be jealous at all. You're not—"

"Illya?" he provided tartly, knowing he should've regretted this when Gaby recoiled like she'd been slapped, but some little buried ember of resentment roared back to life within him at the chance to finally say his piece.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Oh c'mon, don't bullshit me. You always liked getting him riled up, flirting with other guys. Because God forbid you let him actually get close to you but also God forbid you give up the power you had over him." Napoleon chuckled mercilessly. "And then you'd drag me into it, right in front of him, and then you'd get pissed at me whenever I just tried to stay out of it."

The room fell so silent that Napoleon could hear Gaby swallow, could hear her take a quaking breath.

"Fuck you," she hissed. "You are such a fucking asshole."

"I think you told me the same thing the last time we _did_ fuck."

Napoleon was out on the sidewalk in less than thirty seconds.

* * *

The next day was his last in London. He didn't call her and she didn't call him. Back in D.C. three days later his telephone rang at six a.m., forcing him to crawl out of bed with a groan and shuffle into the kitchen, knowing that his bosses would kill him if he missed a work call.

"H'llo?" he rasped into the receiver.

"What did you say to Clive?

Napoleon glanced at the clock, awake enough to recognize Gaby's voice but not enough to comprehend what she was talking about. "What?"

"You know, Clive, the guy I was seeing? Sound familiar? The one you were _obsessed_ with?"

"Oh. Yeah, right. How is h—?"

"I called him today. He said that he didn't think we should see each other anymore because he, quote, 'doesn't want to get in the way of things.' So do you mind telling me what the fuck you said to him?"

Scrubbing a hand over his face, Napoleon wished for death. "Look, I don't know what impression he gave you, but I didn't tell him anything like that."

"So what, you two just chatted about the weather and now he wants to break up with me?

"Jesus Christ, why do you care about this guy so much anyways? He's just..."

"Just _what?_ "

"He got you carnations." It was out of Napoleon's mouth before he could stop it, and he hated that he'd said it, hated the frustration in his own voice, hated that sometime in the past five years he'd given her the power to get under his skin so profoundly and he couldn't remember when this had happened or figure out how to stop it. "You hate carnations."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Gabs..."

"No, seriously, are you fucking kidding me? That's not—I can't even picture what carnations look like. Why would I—?"

"They're those frilly pink ones," he provided, weary, but somehow a tiny bit amused. Sometimes he still managed to forget just how aggressively disinterested in traditional femininity she could be. "You remember, back in Bucharest, January of '64? Standing around that damn florist's shop for an hour waiting for our contact to show? You took one look at the carnations and told me you hated them. Called them 'old lady flowers' or something."

Gaby made a strange noise, too distorted by the phone connection for Napoleon to read clearly. "You...remember that? I didn't even...That was four years ago. Five, almost."

An uncomfortable emotion jolted through Napoleon, making him clear his throat. "I guess? I mean, whatever. Anyways, Clive is a dick. That's the point."

"Oh my God," Gaby swore, the confused curiosity of her tone evaporated back into aggravation. "No, you're a dick. Asshole."

"So am I a dick or an—?"

The harsh clack across the line followed by dead silence answered that question, he supposed.

* * *

He wasn't going to call her back.

He wouldn't.

He didn't owe her anything.

Certainly not an apology.

Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've updated the expected chapter count as I was working through my previous draft and found that things flowed better at around 4 total chapters rather than 5. Halfway through putting final polishes on chapter 3, so not expecting a huge delay on this (though my definition of "huge delay" may be relative given the last time I did a multi-chapter fic it took a year to post the final chapter. Fingers crossed...)


	3. 1968 - 1971

### 1968 - March

During the week after his disastrous phone call with Gaby, Napoleon realized several things. The first, returning to work made him newly aware of just how insufferable the vast majority of his colleagues were, either puffed up failed West Point types who believed the world was theirs to control or effete Ivy Leaguers who figured they knew the world because they'd read enough books. The second, that thanks to a combination of his colleagues' general insufferability and his erratic schedule with extended out-of-town absences, he didn't really have any friends in D.C., only some work acquaintances who were marginally more sufferable than most and a few people he'd call if he wanted a nice fuck. The third, the only person alive on the planet he might call an actual friend was Gaby, which irritated him because neither of them had ever let the other off easy on anything, meaning he'd have to put in some genuine effort, including an apology, if he ever wanted to have a real conversation with her again, let alone anything more. The fourth was the thing which finally spurred him to action, and that was the realization that, even more irritatingly, despite how much he didn't want either her or his own aloneness to matter in the slightest, he _wanted_ to talk to her. Wanted what he'd had a taste of in London; going out to the odd dinner, having engaging conversations about nothing important, learning about her life and telling her about his.

(Maybe if their lives were different, if the world were different, Illya would be a friend. Almost certainly. But both life and the world were what they were, so Napoleon tried not to think about him.)

After his series of realizations, he lasted a whole four days before calling her, pacing back and forth through his kitchen as far as the phone cord would allow while he waited for her to pick up.

"Hello?" Gaby answered on the fifth ring.

"I'm sorry."

There was a rather icy pause. "For?"

"I'm sorry," he repeated, summoning up the hours he'd spent playing this out in his head, trying to get it right. "I shouldn't have...I screwed up, okay? Told Clive to take a hike. Never thought he'd actually listen."

"Why?"

"Please don't make me say it." Begging was not something Napoleon did. But apparently she, like Illya, was the exception to all of his rules.

"I'm hanging up n—"

"Wait. Fine, yeah, I guess I was jealous, okay? And I know I don't have the right, I know we're not..." He sighed. "Actually, what _are_ we? I don't even know anymore."

A muffled noise carried across the line, maybe Gaby's clothes shifting or her hair brushing against the receiver. It made Napoleon picture her sitting at her own kitchen table thousands of miles away, clutching her own phone and trying to grasp, through wires spread under the expanse of the Atlantic, whatever connection still tied them together. It was now frayed and stretched thin by the lack of their shared anchor, but even in Illya's absence they'd never fully stopped tugging at each other.

"I don't know either," she admitted, quiet.

"I shouldn't have said all of that stuff to you about Illya," Napoleon let out in his own quiet admission as he sat down at the table, staring at the wall as the sunset cast razor-sharp shadows from the window. "I just...it hurt. I wanted what you had. How he was with you. I wanted it more than anything. And you _had_ it but you didn't even want it."

"I know," she murmured. "But it wasn't...I did want him. But I was so terrified back then. You know how he is."

"He was never going to be happy keeping things casual. When he's certain about something, he goes all in."

"I couldn't give him that. I wasn't ready."

"And now it's too late," Napoleon filled in, not angry about their separation anymore, just resigned to the dull loss that throbbed whenever he thought about it.

"Yeah." She yawned then, and Napoleon could still picture exactly how she yawned when she wasn't in public; not trying to minimize it out of some sense of decorum, just letting her entire face split apart and her nose scrunch up. She never did anything by halves. The first time she'd let him see that, back in Istanbul after they'd worked a fourteen hour shift, Napoleon had been so charmed by it. By her. Even now, despite all the hurt and distance, he still found himself smiling a little at the memory.

"It's late there, isn't it?" he questioned, noticing now that it was dark outside his window. "I should let you go."

"I guess."

Taking a breath, he steeled himself, then took a step out onto that limb that dangled between them. "But, can I...could I call you again? Maybe next weekend?"

"Just to talk?"

"Yeah, just to talk. Turns out I don't completely hate talking to you," he added with a twist of humour in his voice.

She snorted. "I think I wouldn't completely hate that either."

### 1968 - April

The next weekend Gaby was on her back, staring up at the exhaust system of her car with a frown on her face, when she heard the phone ring from inside the house. She scrambled out, swearing when she tried to sit up a fraction of a second too soon and clocked her forehead on the back bumper, then jogged into the house, telling herself she was rushing because it might be work and for no other reason at all.

"As promised, I'm here just to talk. And maybe I still won't completely hate it," drawled Napoleon when she picked up. She found herself grinning, then tried to wrestle her expression down, even though he couldn't see her.

"No promises from me." But even as she said it she was still smiling a little. Damn him.

And they talked. Not about big stuff. Neither of them were brave enough to cut a straight path through the jungle of history between them, but they skirted around the edges, reminiscing about little moments from the U.N.C.L.E. year like that time Illya got adopted by a stray cat who kept following him back to the safehouse, no matter how much Illya grumbled and pretended to be annoyed, even after Gaby had caught him stroking the cat's chin one day when it had jumped up onto their windowsill. She'd been worried they'd have nothing to talk about, but an hour passed before she said her goodbyes, with both admitting that they hadn't completely hated this conversation either and they might even not hate the idea of another in a couple of weeks.

### 1968 - July

"Clive wants to get back together," Gaby found herself confessing to Napoleon on one of their phone calls which had somehow turned into a regular occurrence. Both still claimed to at best not completely hate talking, but she was pretty sure it had been a joke for both of them for a while now.

"Oh?" Napoleon responded and somehow she could hear the way his throat constricted around the sound, even though he corrected his tone to encouragement a second later. "That's great. Are you gonna—?"

"No. I told him it was over." She began twisting the cord the other way, glaring at a bit where its spiral had gotten kinked and reversed itself.

"You okay?"

Gaby let out an indifferent noise. "Yeah, I'm fine. After I said it I was kind of relieved, honestly. He just wasn't..." She paused to choose her words. "Wasn't someone I could see a future with."

(Wasn't what she pictured when she imagined having something more with someone, imaginings which, no matter how much she tried to redirect herself, always seemed to end up involving blue eyes and broad shoulders and steady hands.)

### 1969 - February

Returning to Monaco wasn't the worst thing Gaby could have been doing in February. It wasn't too cold, and running in a country which was not overtly hostile always lowered her stress levels somewhat. More and more, she dreaded going out in the field. She'd had a few close calls over the years, and ever since Indonesia she'd been unable to turn such a blind eye to the actual impacts of her work, both of which had soured her previous excitement. Still, it was her job until she found something better.

(Or got killed, but she tried not to think like that. Waverly said it wasn't healthy, and she usually listened to his advice.)

She was striding down Avenue Henry Dunant hunting for a place to sit down for some coffee when she spotted a tall blond man in the crowd and froze.

 _Damn him_.

Even though they'd already locked eyes she turned away in a futile attempt to dodge Illya's gaze. Though he didn't follow her then, it was no surprise to receive a knock at her door two nights later and see his chest through the peephole. She ushered him in, not because she wanted him there but because he had a stubborn set to his jaw that made her suspect he wouldn't simply leave if she shut him out, and neither of them needed to be so conspicuous.

"What?" she demanded once the door was closed again.

Illya blinked. Closed his mouth, which had already been halfway open in greeting. Said nothing.

"Why are you _here_?" she pressed.

"I thought..." Illya began uncertainly before frowning. "You are upset with me. I know I shouldn't be here."

"No, you shouldn't. You'll get us both killed."

Illya gazed at her for a long moment. "But I wanted to see you," he murmured, too soft for all that had happened, and Gaby wanted to scream at him.

"I'm not fucking you."

Illya flinched, corners of his mouth tightening in a guilty grimace. "That wasn't what I—You found out?"

A sickening laugh pressed at Gaby's windpipe. She forced it back. "That you're married? That you and I..." she couldn't bring herself to put a name on their one night together, "and then a month later you turn around and marry some woman? Yeah. I found out."

"It wasn't like that. You don't understand."

"You and I slept together in April. You married her in May. That is _literally_ what happened." Then that laugh finally escaped her, the sound jarring and false. "Look, your life isn't my business now, any more than mine is yours. But don't show up here and try to pretend like we meant anything to each other. Like whatever we had was real."

Instead of the anger she was expecting, almost hoping for, Illya just looked hurt, which somehow made Gaby want to scream at him again because _she_ was the hurt one here. She was sure of it.

"I was so..." Illya swallowed. "I tried to wait for you. I promise, I did. But that last night, no goodbye, not even a note, you just left me and I...Three years. Three years on my own. I got so _lonely_."

Gaby bit her lip, not pointing out that he could have defected. She knew Waverly had offered him asylum back when things had fallen apart and Illya had chosen to go home. She didn't point out that it wasn't too late, he could still defect now. Mostly because she was terrified that he would say no again. That she still wouldn't be enough for him.

"I never meant for it to happen like this," he continued. "Nadya and I, we were only seeing each other six months. Then I was on a short mission, only three weeks, and I met you again and we...But when I get back to Moscow Nadya tells me she's pregnant. And I wasn't sure if we were ready but we talk about it and we decided we would try. And we will do things the proper way, get married."

Of course he would decide that. So many other men would run, deny it, pressure the woman for an abortion, but no, Illya was so impossibly noble that Gaby still ached to scream at him.

Turning away, she walked over to the window of her hotel room and gazed out at the sea. "And how is your _wife_?"

"She's...okay. She isn't..." When Illya trailed off Gaby glanced back at him, finding him staring at his feet. "Since Lyova was born she struggles. Much more than we were expecting. The birth was difficult and since then she has not been very...happy. She misses her work, misses her life from before. I try to look after him when I can so she can take breaks, but it’s still...We’re doing our best, I suppose."

Some of Gaby's anger left her. Despite everything, she wanted better than that for Illya. And even for his wife. "Are you okay?"

Illya shrugged. "I worry a lot. For her mostly. Lyova, though, he is good. He's perfect. Whenever I see him, I forget all of my troubles." A radiant smile bloomed on Illya's face. He pulled his wallet out of his jacket. "Do you want to see him?"

"Um, sure," Gaby said, not really sure, but Illya was already stepping closer, rooting through his wallet to retrieve a small square of paper from some hidden compartment.

"This is my son," Illya told her, pressing the photo into her hand. "Lev."

Gaby brought the picture up to her face, getting her first look at Lev. At Illya's _son_. She wasn't sure how old he was in the picture but she stared at a pudgy toddler with overstuffed sausage arms and a gaping, gummy smile. Bright blue eyes, just like Illya. She knew that many babies were born with blue eyes only to later lose them but she didn't know by what age this would happen, whether Lev's would have changed already, but when she considered the possibility she frowned. A short fuzz of hair darkened the top of his head, not blond, maybe brown or black.

"He's beautiful," she said more because it was the polite thing to say rather than this baby being remarkable in any way she could discern.

"Yes, he is," Illya replied in a lovestruck murmur. "This is a picture from his birthday, in December. He turned one. He's just started to walk. All on his own, doesn't need to hold onto the sofa anymore. Everyone says he's the happiest baby they know, he always smiles, always laughs, doesn't cry too much. And he has this little lion toy, Fedya, that he—"

As Illya continued his ridiculous, sentimental gushing, Gaby was struck by a wrenching sensation deep in her chest, strong enough to stun her momentarily. She'd never wanted marriage and babies and all of that nonsense but somehow, though she still didn't want it, Illya having those things with someone who wasn't her felt like something had been stolen from her. Something she'd never even valued until she couldn't get it back.

She shoved the photo into Illya's hands, interrupting him in the middle of a sentence, then walked as far away from him as she could in the tiny hotel room, her shoulders rounding, her chest caving in on itself.

"Gaby?"

"You need to leave," she told him, horrified to discover that she was dangerously near tears. "Now."

"I didn't—I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt you."

Gaby scoffed. People hurt her. That was how life went. She'd just forgotten that for long enough to let Illya be one of those people.

"Gaby..." The way Illya said her name still sent shivers up her spine. He said it like something sacred, so warm and reverent that she couldn't possibly measure up. "Can I...?"

Ever so carefully Illya set one huge hand on her shoulder. She shuddered, caught between shoving him away and clawing out to drag him closer. The former instinct won. She jerked her shoulder to dislodge his hand, whirling around to glare at him, furious that he would get to see the tears he'd torn from her.

" _Leave_ , Illya," she snarled. "Just leave me alone."

Something cracked in his expression, something she instantly wished she could patch back together. But it was too late, he was gone, the tender man she was probably still in love with, and in his place was a stranger.

"Fine," he said, curt, turning away, pausing with his hand on the doorknob to glance back at her. "And I know why you're here. You would have better luck with the ambassador's wife than the ambassador. They are both..." Illya made some gesture of his hand, causing Gaby's eyebrows to dart up because apparently her intel got _that_ wrong.

Then the door closed behind him and Gaby collapsed face-first onto the bed, loosing a muffled growl into the mattress. Much later she pulled herself together again, got up, got ready to leave. But she paused, looking down at the little table next to the door.

Illya left the photo of Lev.

She stared down at the boy, seeing Illya in his eyes and hating him for it. Yet when she turned the photo over she found something scrawled on the back in Illya's writing. Russian cursive remained largely baffling to her but she'd managed to pick up just enough that she could read the brief caption.

'Lev Illyich Kuryakin, born 23 December 1967. One year old.'

The Russian practice of giving the baby a name after his father's was never something Gaby had held any opinions about. Staring at that little 'Illyich', though, she was hit by another crashing wave of emotion, grief and bitterness tangled together with that warmth she still felt for Illya no matter how much she tried to make it stop.

She tucked the photo into a hidden spot in her suitcase. Closed her eyes for long enough to take a deep, steadying breath. Then she went to go do her job.

### 1969 - April

After a year of phone calls every couple of weeks, Napoleon had grown used to being woken up at odd hours on a Saturday since either he or Gaby was off on a mission god-only-knows-where and one of them had gotten the time difference wrong. Every call was a risk, tappable and traceable as a phone line was, but it was worth it to hear the sounds of Gaby clattering around making breakfast while she contemplated the latest work she'd do on her car once she was back home, as she swore and burned her food and made him practice his German. In turn Napoleon would fill her in on the latest office gossip, changing the names just in case they were being bugged. She was a surprisingly good listener, laughing at the right bits, offering her own dry commentary throughout. They'd both come to the realization that the other was terrible at making friends and maintaining a social life, so they'd begun pushing each other to meet new people, maybe even give seemingly annoying colleagues another chance. At first it had seemed absurd, but Napoleon, thanks to Gaby's prodding, had actually discovered one data analyst he worked with who would hang out at art galleries with him on weekends then go for a beer, who could make intelligent conversation about the art without being a snob, and who had in turn introduced Napoleon to some of his own friends, to the point at which Napoleon might have actually had friends of his own. When he'd shared his progress with Gaby she'd teased him a bit but then quietly told him she was happy for him; then she filled him in on her own experiments in friend-making, which were beginning to bear fruit too.

There was plenty he didn't tell her, though. About how at some point in the past year of phone calls he'd realized he'd rather listen to her debate about whether or not to cut her hair short than he would go out and find someone to have sex with. About how when her calls didn't come first thing in the morning he'd spend his Saturdays loitering around his apartment, ready to jump for the phone because at some point after that first realization he also realized that she and Illya were the best things that ever happened to him in his whole damn life, but it was about five years too late for this realization to help anything.

Or perhaps he was just scared that if he told her that she'd stop calling. Wouldn't be the first time she ran away without a backwards glance.

### 1969 - July

One Sunday in July, after four days of anticipation, Napoleon sat in a bar in Johannesburg at nearly five in the morning and, along with a throng of other engrossed patrons, he listened to a man take one giant leap for mankind.

It felt like a shift in the wind. The space race had been gaining momentum when U.N.C.L.E. had begun; Peril had bragged for weeks after the Russians put the first woman in space in the summer of '63. President Kennedy, who'd vowed to put an American on the moon by the end of the decade, had been assassinated just a few months after they'd begun working together. And now Kennedy's promise was fulfilled, the greatest race of them all was over. Napoleon wondered what Peril was thinking of all this, if he was listening, perhaps even watching a broadcast at this same moment, their attention for once turned to the same thing. It would be an hour later in Moscow. Maybe Peril would be sitting in the pre-dawn gloom, covertly tuning into the radio broadcast which would no doubt be jammed by Soviet censors, his young son curled up next to him on the sofa as a sleeping witness to history.

Or maybe not. Napoleon had no way of knowing anything of what Illya did now.

He shook himself out of his fantasies. After a burst of raucous conversation after Armstrong's first step, the bar crowd had quieted down again so they could listen to him compare the lunar footing to that of the simulations. The whole thing was a touch surreal. Beyond Napoleon's ability to picture it. Perhaps someday he'd find a way to watch the TV broadcast, though how he'd do this he knew not. In the morning he'd phone Gaby. In their year of calls he'd learned that when unrushed and given space to talk, she could be a surprisingly gifted story-teller. So he knew that she'd give him as good a recap as he could hope for of the TV broadcast. He wished he was watching it with her, not a room of strangers who, as Armstrong fussed with cables and the radio hosts struggled to talk through the lull, had resumed their own noisy conversations around him, leaving him silent, clutching his glass and glancing around for someone of his own to talk to. But no one met his gaze. So he ordered another round and once again focused on the sounds of the man on the moon.

### 1969 - December

On Christmas day, Napoleon's call to Gaby's flat went unanswered. Last they'd spoken he'd told her he'd call today and she said she'd be home, but perhaps work had come for her, or she was visiting friends, so he puttered around his apartment tidying up until he had nothing left to tidy, then eyed the window. It wasn't that cold; he really should get out for a walk. Yet he found himself stalling for another half hour until finally he conceded defeat, going to fetch his coat when the phone rang.

"Hi, it's me," came Gaby's voice, with a little crackle of static. "Sorry, you probably called earlier."

"I did, but it's fine. Are you at home? The phone sounds terrible."

"No, Waverly found out I was going to be on my own for Christmas and he invited me to join him and his family." Gaby sounded a touch self-conscious. "I told him it really was fine, I never grew up doing Christmas anyways, but he was rather adamant about it so...here I am."

Over the line a faint voice started, coming closer to the receiver until Napoleon could make out, "...always welcome, so stop acting like you're an imposition," in Waverly's voice, though still muffled as if he were standing a short distance away. "Is that Solo?"

"Yes."

"Well, hand him over for a moment."

"Sir..."

"Gaby, how many times must I remind you? Not only am I no longer your boss, I am now happily retired and therefore absolutely no one ought to be calling me 'sir', least of all you. And if you're going to be making international calls on my line to a mutual acquaintance, the least you can do is allow me to cut in for a moment." There was a brief shuffling noise before Waverly's voice came back to Napoleon's ear, now crisp. "Happy Christmas, Mr. Solo."

"Merry Christmas, sir," replied Napoleon on instinct.

"Oh for God's sake, not you too. Just 'Waverly' is fine, thank you."

"Not going to lie, sir, I don't think I'll be able to get used to that."

"Yes, well, fair enough I suppose," chuckled Waverly. "How are you keeping?"

"Fine. Spent eight months of this year in the field, but I'm back now."

"Yes, Gaby did mention you'd been off saving the world. Hopefully back safe at home and celebrating now, though."

"Oh yes, very festive around here."

"You know, I don't believe you in the slightest, but Gaby looks rather impatient to have the phone back so I'll have to let you get away with that one."

Then Gaby reclaimed the phone. "Sorry," she murmured a moment later. Waverly must have wandered off. "I didn't think he would do that."

"It's fine," Napoleon replied honestly. "I'm glad you're not alone."

"Like you." She didn't say it like a question but it seemed to want confirmation.

Napoleon glanced around his own empty apartment. He'd only just gotten home a few days ago. In an attempt to drag himself out of self-pity he'd found a little Christmas tree, just a knee-high sapling, and bought a little tinsel to drape over it, but the sight of it perched on his coffee table now felt, more than anything, like an embarrassing reminder of his own solitude. His brother, his perfect brother who had never been a criminal, who had never brought their mother anything but pride, had sent a card with four perfect signatures from his perfect nuclear family, which Napoleon had set next to the pathetic little tree. He'd never sent his family any cards. Hadn't seen the point.

"I mean, for now, I guess. But honestly, it's fine. It's been years since I really did the whole big 'Christmas' thing." It had been before the war, actually, but for some reason he wasn't keen to tell Gaby that. "Besides, I'm still buried in paperwork from my last mission, wouldn't be much fun."

"You know, the first Christmas I ever had was during our year," which had become their shorthand for the all too brief time that U.N.C.L.E. had existed. "You were the one who tried to show Illya and me. You got me those lovely driving gloves."

He remembered those gloves. He remembered picking them out during a one-day layover in Paris in early December, when there had been fluffy snow tumbling from the clouds and he'd somehow gotten into a sentimental mood, slipping away from her and Peril to scour the city for appropriate gifts. Gaby's gloves he'd found at a little shop in the Marais, the supple tan leather drawing his eye immediately. Peril, in turn, had gotten a new set of binoculars with fine Swiss lenses.

"I still have them," Gaby continued. "The left one's got a bit of a stain on it now, I don't even remember how that happened, but they're so soft and it's hard to find nice driving gloves to fit my hands. I don't know how you managed."

"Glad to know they're still doing service. It just occurs to me, I got you and Peril those beautiful presents and have yet to receive a single Christmas gift in return. From either of you. Very rude."

She chuckled softly. "Well, I suppose next year I'll have to fix that." Then she made a regretful noise. "I should go, it's tea time and Waverly said something about there being a cake."

"'It's tea time', God, you really have gone native."

"Well, at least I don't sound like a cowboy," Gaby retorted in what sounded like her attempt at an American accent, making Napoleon bark with surprised laughter.

"Was that supposed to be me? This explains why I was the only one who ever had to do accents on our missions."

"You try doing this in your second language!" she shot back, but she was laughing. "I would pay good money to hear you attempt Bavarian."

"I'm not even going to try." Then the laughter settled down. "I should let you go. Merry Christmas, Gabs," he added, hoping he didn't sound too warm, hoping it wouldn't scare her off.

"Merry Christmas," she replied, instant, unafraid.

### 1970 - May

Gaby didn't date much. Her career kept her out of town and busy, and also kept her healthily paranoid about being assassinated by enemy agents, both things which made getting close to people a challenge. She knew her singleness had become a joke around the office; she'd taken a few ribs about becoming one of 'the bachelors', those crusty old men who'd devoted their life to the service. The other women in the office had largely stopped trying to set her up on dates, seeming to feel that since she was now thirty-one and still unpaired she was clearly either determined to die alone or unlucky enough to be doomed to such a fate. Sometimes she was tempted to bring up Napoleon just to stop the rumours but she didn't owe the gossips anything, let alone a glimpse at this private thing she'd quietly been cultivating for so many years and which still seemed too fragile for such exposure.

But she wasn't a monk. And once she'd settled back down from another exhausting, demoralising mission of setting back a nascent democracy just to prop up a strongman with pro-British leanings, she decided to go down to a bar and had the good luck of finding a guy in possession of a nice smile, a stated disinterest in commitment, and a willingness to follow her lead, which was just about perfect for her current needs. All of this being how she found herself in the front hall of her flat, letting herself be pressed up against the wall while—Christ, what was his name? Jim? Tim? Something dull and English—while what's-his-name worked his lips down her neck. She let her nails dig into the back of his neck and he moaned. Yes, this was very promising.

They'd made it about halfway towards the bedroom when the phone in the kitchen started to ring. Jim-slash-Tim made a peevish noise into the skin of her throat.

"Who's ringing you _now_?"

"Probably work." She pushed him away as she pushed off the wall, ignoring his questions about what kind of job she had that would be calling her past midnight, and went into the other room to pluck up the receiver. "Hello?"

"Hey, it's me." There was something strange about Napoleon's voice, thin. But she knew he was away on assignment, so it could've just been the connection.

"You're early, it's Friday, not Saturday. Well, actually, it's Saturday now, I suppose."

"What?" he replied, as if confused. "Oh. Right. Shit, what time is it there?"

"Half past midnight."

He swore again. "Sorry. I, uh..." She waited for him to keep talking, but received silence.

"Are you okay?"

"Uh, yeah, I'm—Well...I'm gonna be fine, I swear," he added before her worry could swell into outright alarm, "I just...it was close. Fuck, it was way too close this time."

"Where are you?"

"You know I can't tell you. But it was just...you ever have one of those days when everything goes to shit? It was one of those days. Nothing went right and I..." He took a rattling breath. "Me sitting here, talking to you now? That's 'cause I got lucky. _Real_ lucky."

"Shit."

"Yeah." A cough came across the line, then a shallow groan. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have called, now you're just gonna worry, but I..."

"Sabine? Is everything alright? I thought you said it would be work," came what's-his-face's voice from the doorway to the kitchen. She'd forgotten about him.

"One second," she said to Napoleon before pressing the mouthpiece to her shoulder, turning to face her guest. "Everything's f—" Was it fine? She didn't feel fine. Her stomach felt bunched up in anxious knots. "Can you just wait a minute?"

Jim-Tim gave her an odd frown. "Is it your family, or...?"

"No, he's not—Look, just _wait_ , okay?" Then she put the phone back to her ear. "Are you still there?"

"Yeah. Who was that?"

"No one. What happened?"

"Classified," Napoleon non-answered with a wry tone. But he seemed to sense she needed more than that because he continued. "Was going into a meeting with a source we _thought_ was good. Turns out they weren't. Then things went real south real fast." In other words, he'd lived through the nightmare Gaby had been having a few nights a month ever since she started working for Waverly almost ten years ago.

"But you're safe now." She clutched the phone a little more tightly. "Tell me you're safe now."

"I'm safe now. I promise. And I'm—"

"Okay, look, _no one_ can't really stick around all night, so he's going to be leaving now," muttered her guest, making Gaby glance over just in time to catch his back slipping out into the hall. She swore, debated running after him for half a second, then turned back to the phone, distantly hearing the front door slam.

"Sorry about that," Gaby said.

"You got a date or something?"

"Not anymore." She sagged against the wall in relief; if Napoleon was casually quizzing about her love life, he really was okay. "It's fine, honestly. He wasn't that interesting. I'm just..." Her throat tightened up as she once again thought about what Napoleon had been through, how close he'd come to being so much worse off than this. "It's a good thing you're okay," she croaked. "If you weren't I'd find you and kick your arse for making me worry."

"I'm sorry," he murmured. "And I'm sorry for ruining your night. I just..." There was a soft shuffing noise, like he was running a hand over his face. "I think I'm getting too old for this shit."

"No, you're not."

He sighed. "Can I still do it? Yeah, sure. But I'm dreading it more and more each time I get sent out. It's not fun anymore. I just spend every mission worried that I'm not going to come back. That some Saturday you're going to phone and I'll just...never pick up."

She closed her eyes, trying to ignore the grief she felt just imagining that hypothetical Saturday but unable to ignore just how many times she'd felt the same fears. "Me too. I just got back from, well, I can't tell you, but it was horrible. The mission was for all the worst reasons and I was scared the whole time that I'd be killed for it."

"Do you ever think about Indonesia?"

"Yeah."

"Do you ever think that it's hard to imagine anything good enough we could have done that would make up for all those people killed?"

She swallowed. "Yeah. I still...I know I didn't see the worst of it. I know I didn't have to live through the worst of it, didn't die for it. But even what I saw...I still have nightmares. A few times a year. I'll wake up feeling like I'm choking in the jungle air and there's blood everywhere and I _deserve_ it."

"No, you don't."

"I think I do." Blinking up at the ceiling, she shifted the phone to her other ear. "I took the money and I did the job, no one forced me. You know, Asep told me back then to get out of this business before I lost myself. I think he was right. I even...I tried, a couple of times. Talked about quitting. But Waverly always talked me into staying and after all he did to get me out, I felt like I owed it to him."

"It's not too late. You're young, you've got other skills. Start your own garage, make a go of it." There was a smile in Napoleon's voice. "Get your hands dirty again, wear another cute pair of overalls."

Gaby laughed. "Cute? You take that back."

"I'm sorry, I meant that you look competent and extremely intimidating in your overalls, of course."

"Much better."

Napoleon made a soft chuckle. Then, after a pause, "I don't know what I'd do."

"If I could start over then so can you."

"No, I'm serious. Only three things I've been in my adult life are a soldier, an art thief, and a spy. I'd rather drop dead than go back to the military if they'd even have me, and the other two don't really go well on a resumé."

She thought of everything she'd learned from him, art, languages, all the history he'd quietly stored away in his head which he seemed to view as unremarkable, like she could've turned to anyone on the street instead of him and asked for a summary of the Peloponnesian War. "You could be a translator. An author. A historian."

"I guess," he allowed, sounding not quite convinced. "Or I could be your assistant in the garage. Get you coffee, do the books, stand behind you and glare menacingly if any customers try to give you shit. Maybe I could have my own cute pair of overalls."

"Well, you've already proven that you like obeying my commands," Gaby snorted, remembering their night in Monaco.

"That I do," he murmured, his voice suddenly dropping an octave and _God_ , Gaby wished more than anything that he was there with her instead of off somewhere being almost killed.

"When are you going to come and visit me again?" she asked before she could quash the impulse.

"Miss me?"

She could feel her cheeks heating, but forced herself to be as honest as she could bear. "Maybe."

There was a moment of silence, like she'd stunned him with her admission. "I...I wish I knew. I swear, I wish I could be there right now, but since everything's gone to shit here I have no idea how long it'll take."

"Oh, right."

"I'm sorry."

Though he couldn't hear her, she shrugged. "It's the job."

He sighed. "God, I hate this. You have no idea how much I wish I was..." He broke off, a second, distant voice suddenly cutting across the phone, the words too faint for Gaby to make out. About ten seconds later Napoleon was back. "Sorry about that. I have to go. Thanks for this, it was...I really needed to talk to you."

"Of course. Call me when you can?" She couldn't be upset with his erratic schedule given the number of times she'd been out of contact with him while on her own missions.

He agreed, they said their goodbyes, and then Gaby was sitting on her kitchen floor, her phone's dial tone steadily droning away while she glanced around at the dark, empty room and hugged her knees.

### 1970 - November

It took a few months for Napoleon to visit her, but when he did her only warning that he'd be in London on Thursday was a call on Tuesday.

"Last minute decision," he provided as a vague explanation, which she knew meant something for work. "I'll be busy but I should have some time to see you Friday night."

"I've got a party. Someone from the office is retiring and I promised I'd pop round. But we could meet up after. Or—" Gaby hesitated, her desire to see Napoleon on this rare visit warring with her caution. "Or you could come with me? I just need to put in an appearance, it shouldn't take long, but it's fine if you don't—"

"Sure, why not?"

So two days later Gaby found herself at her coworker's house, introducing her boss and his wife to Napoleon.

"This is my...friend," Gaby provided. "Napoleon Solo. We used to work together."

"Charmed," Napoleon purred, taking the wife's hand with that damned _smile_ of his. But despite his incorrigible tendency to flirt, the evening started well, a tame affair mostly limited to people in Gaby's immediate division. Napoleon stayed by her side, charming everyone and taking the pressure off her to make small talk, the perfect guest. After a while she relaxed enough to slip away from him, needing to catch a coworker for a quick chat about an operation next week anyways, a conversation to which Napoleon was definitely not invited. Besides, her punch needed refilling too.

When Gaby had gotten the info she'd needed and began to make her way back through the crowd she went still at the sight of Napoleon talking to a young woman, early twenties, whom Gaby recognizes, after a moment, as the daughter of their host. She was a pretty young thing, pale in that ashy, freckled way a lot of Brits seemed to be, with dirty blonde hair and green eyes. Curious, Gaby watched them for a few seconds, seeing the way the girl was smiling up at him, leaning closer but then losing her nerve and retreating; noting how Napoleon's returning smile was friendly yet not overtly encouraging, and Gaby froze when she recognized the tenor of this interaction.

Recognized herself.

Not literally. But she remembered being twenty-four, twenty-five, having spent her life up to that point cultivating flirtations with boys her own age. And then she'd met Napoleon and Illya, both startlingly attractive. Both _men._ Yet Illya's longing had been transparent and that hadn't felt too different from being eighteen and knowing she had an unassailable power over the boy she'd just kissed because she had breasts and he wanted to see them. Nothing was so crude with Illya, of course, but she knew he wanted her and, though the force of his want had been too much for her at the time, she'd at least understood him.

Napoleon, on the other hand, had been smoke; opaque, yet slipping through her fingers whenever she tried to grasp those occasional, brief looks she'd thought she caught from him. Looks like Illya's, ones that made her want, deeply. And though she could match snark with Napoleon her attempted flirtations always seemed like trying to hunt a lion with a water pistol; some childish folly against a foe who so outmatched her efforts that she was viewed with indulgence rather than taken seriously. She'd forever been finding courage, trying it on Napoleon, then running back to Illya; good, safe Illya who didn't confuse her by giving her those _looks_ one moment but neatly avoiding her artless entanglements the next.

This young woman—God, was Gaby ever that young?—had the same nervy brashness that Gaby remembered forcing herself to affect when she'd tried to flirt with Napoleon. And Napoleon looked the same as she remembered, friendly, patient, but not giving her anything back. All of those years ago she hadn't been able to understand his non-reaction as anything other than cruelty or spite. But now, seeing the youth of this girl next to him, Gaby suddenly realized that what a good man he was; realized that she'd had him all wrong and he'd let her be angry rather than tell her what a goddamn _kid_ she was.

Shaking herself, Gaby returned to Napoleon's side, putting the young woman out of her misery by slipping a hand through the crook of Napoleon's elbow and bumping his arm with her shoulder.

Napoleon's eyebrows bobbed up. "Hey you," he greeted her, mouth quirking into a half smile that Gaby adored. "Thought I'd have to track you down. Have you met Cindy?" As he made introductions Gaby tucked herself a bit closer into his side. It was overkill and she knew it; Cindy had looked defeated enough already, but after so many phone calls Gaby just wanted to enjoy having him there with her while she could.

"Do you want to head home soon?" Gaby asked him during a pause in the conversation, lowering her voice, biting her lip when he turned his full attention on her. "You promised you'd make me hot cocoa before bed." This was, in fact, true, they'd jokingly discussed it on the way over, but the implication was _definitely_ overkill, sending an embarrassed flush up on Cindy's cheeks. Gaby didn't really feel bad about that.

* * *

Having Napoleon at her house was different this time. Not like years ago when he'd just shown up, when things between them had been tenuous even before Clive happened. Now they had hours of phone calls between them, shared banalities of chatting over breakfasts and lunches and while they did dishes, so it felt natural to circle back to her kitchen once she'd changed out of her party dress and find him poking through her cupboards for the cocoa powder. He was in shirtsleeves, tie and suit jacket tossed over the back of a chair, shuffling around on his sock feet while he hummed to himself. A warm, bubbly feeling settled into Gaby's chest as she leaned against the door frame. This would be a rather lovely thing to come home to. A few years ago such a thought would be terrifying; yet now, with him here she found that many things were not as terrifying as they had been when she'd considered them alone. After all, this was the man who'd convinced her to zipline over the Berlin Wall. Perhaps there was something about him that just inspired bravery in her. Or insanity. Perhaps both.

"You're awfully quiet," Napoleon murmured, dutifully whisking as the cocoa began to simmer. "Penny for your thoughts?"

"I should keep you around. Have someone to make cocoa for me whenever I want."

Something odd flitted across his face, gone too quickly for her to identify. "What, can't find any strapping young Brits to cater to your every whim? I find that hard to believe."

"Wouldn't know, I haven't looked recently. Besides, I already have you trained." She wandered over, leaning her hip against the counter next to him.

"True, I wouldn't envy anyone trying to learn the quirks of your taste buds," he teased, reaching past her to retrieve a couple of mugs. "I've come to the conclusion it's a lifelong endeavour into which I've only made the first inroads. Some nigh-impossible task that a Buddhist monk might tackle on the quest to spiritual enlightenment."

Gaby hopped up to sit on the counter before taking the mug he offered, releasing a happy hum as her senses were flooded with the rich, sweet fragrance. "Well, clearly the enlightenment thing isn't working on you."

"You wound me." Though he didn't look wounded, not with the way his eyes were sparkling and his mouth was twitching with a repressed grin. Gaby wanted him to smile at her like that for the next ten hours straight. Minimum.

"How long can you stay?" she asked, trepidatious.

"Catching the red-eye tomorrow night. But I'm here until I have to leave for the airport, if you'll have me." He looked a touch uncertain himself, like he was venturing out further onto a shaky branch. Gaby thought back to her revelation at the party and suddenly wondered just how many years he'd been standing on this branch, hoping that she would someday be ready to reach out for him. So she leaned over and kissed him, not for the sake of a mission or to distract herself from a broken heart or any of the other reasons she'd done so in the past, but because she simply wanted him.

### 1971 - May

Gaby's latest call was a surprise for Napoleon. Not that she phoned him, she did that every other Saturday, but phoning on a Friday to say she'd be in town tomorrow? She'd never visited him before. It was a change in their patterns. Napoleon wasn't an expert in ciphers but he knew that changes in patterns were often where there was the most information to be gleaned. So he did a bit of digging, learned what flight she'd be on and drove out to the glimmering new Dulles Airport. As he stood by arrivals he felt more like an ass the longer he waited, but then she was there and when she graced him with a surprised smile everything was right in the world again.

"Hey you," Napoleon murmured as she walked up.

She rolled her eyes. "You don't need to flirt with me."

"Yeah but I _like_ flirting with you."

Despite Gaby's efforts to appear unaffected, she grinned, ducking her head with a little snort as Napoleon used his stealthiest lift to extract her luggage from her hands, ignoring her protests about not needing the help while setting off for the parking lot.

"Where are you staying?" he paused to ask when they reached the car, dangling the keys out for her to take, more on instinct than conscious thought.

Shaking her head, she pushed his hand back, something shifting in her expression that had Napoleon on edge.

"No, I'm all jet-lagged, I shouldn't. Can we just drive somewhere?" she asked softly. In all the years he'd known her, she'd rarely asked for anything, and never softly. "Somewhere quiet?"

"Sure thing," he replied, struggling to tamp down his surprise. But he put her bag in the trunk, expecting a barb from her about how he’d pulled forward into the parking space, faintly alarmed when instead, as he began to back out, she kicked her shoes off and curled her legs up, a ragged sigh pushing out of her chest.

He didn't have any destination in mind for 'somewhere quiet' so he just headed west, giving Gaby the silence she seemed to need. Something was up, but she'd tell him when she was ready. Soon they were cruising past farmers' fields, the sun heating Napoleon's left arm, propped up against the window. His mind wandered. He wondered what Illya would say about Gaby's strange mood. When he glanced over he found her hunkered in a little ball, mouth tipped open a little, deep in the sleep of someone far overdue for some rest.

So he kept driving.

It was only when he returned from paying for gas that he found Gaby up, leaning against the car, stretching her back out.

"You shouldn't have let me sleep like that," she said, not looking up.

"Figured you needed it." And, though he didn't plan to tell her this, about twenty minutes into her nap he'd realized he couldn't quite bring himself to wake her. "Your back sore?"

She shrugged. Even when she was younger she'd had back pain on and off, which when he'd asked she vaguely blamed on dancing but provided no further explanation for. All he knew was that it got stiff when she sat for too long, ached sometimes if she was on her feet all day.

"Where are we?" she asked instead of answering.

Napoleon glanced around. "Somewhere outside Middleburg, I think. Wasn't really paying attention." He gestured at the distant houses scattered along the pock-marked rural road, a mangy horse eyeing them from the field across the way. "Quiet enough for you?"

Gaby looked around with a speculative squint. Then she dropped back into the passenger seat. "A little bit further."

It was only when he was taking them down some dirt road, past fields interspersed with the occasional woodlot, not a house in sight, that Gaby finally set her hand atop his on the stick and told him to pull over. She climbed from the car, scanning the horizon as Napoleon circled the hood to stand next to her on the shoulder of the road. Seemingly satisfied at last with the remoteness of their setting, she turned to him.

"Illya contacted me."

She was staring right at Napoleon as she said it and he wished she weren't, because he knew the burst of confused emotion that jolted through him must've shown on his face.

"You sure it was really him?"

"I didn't talk to him, but he got a letter to me. It's him."

"You know, even if it sounds like him, it could still be someone—"

"No, it couldn't. When I..." she frowned, "on that last day, before you and Illya woke up I left a one-time cipher pad for him. Those are unbreakable. And it's..." Her lower lip found its way between her teeth, her voice lowering even further. "He called me _Chop Shop_."

Napoleon swallowed. Looked away. Gaby said that like it meant something, like some secret she had once shared with Illya and either forgotten that Napoleon had never been privy to it or had simply assumed that he'd always known. After so long it seemed absurd to still envy whatever intimacy those two once had but it was a jarring reminder that despite how many more years Napoleon had now spent getting to know Gaby, some small part of her remained forever inaccessible to him, a tiny sliver of her soul that he suspected would always be Illya's alone. For not the first time he wondered if Illya had been the first true, grown-up _romance_ of her life. Or could have been, if she'd let him in.

"He wants to meet us," Gaby resumed, pulling Napoleon out of his thoughts. "His message said the place I saw him last, this hotel room in Monaco. But it said he wanted to meet on the date you two met last, and I don't know that."

Napoleon tried to remember that one drunken, heady fumble he'd had with Illya in the world's shittiest flat, in Yugoslavia...God, it had been _six years_ since he'd seen Illya. That didn't seem possible. "It would be soon. I think it was early summer. June, probably," he said slowly. "I could check in my files."

Gaby squinted into the middle distance for the moment. "I think I won't be in the field then. Can you get the time off? Come with me?" she asked, glancing at him before her eyes suddenly dived down to stare at her feet, as if afraid of his answer.

"I'll try." He wished he could do better, but it was the truth. "Did he say why he wants to meet?"

"No, nothing." Huffing out a frustrated breath, Gaby circled away, leaning against the car. "I'm worried for him," she admitted quietly. "It's such a risk, being spotted with us. He wouldn't do this unless he was in trouble."

As per usual, Gaby was right. But Napoleon knew she didn't want to hear that now. He wandered over to her side again, nudging her with his shoulder.

"Maybe. But Peril's smart. Smartest guy I've ever known. You know what he's like, he probably weighed every option in his head ten times, overthought it to _death_."

"That always did annoy you.”

"Drove me nuts.” Though these days Napoleon would give an awful lot to have Peril driving him nuts again.

"I miss him," she murmured, somehow echoing his thoughts. "I've never met anyone else quite like him."

"Yeah, you two really did have something special."

Gaby shook her head. "Maybe back then. I don't know anymore. It was a long time ago."

It didn't feel like that to Napoleon. But then he glanced over at Gaby and reminded himself that he had a decade on her, give or take. He'd lived more years for comparison. For some reason it made him think back to the first time they'd met, leaping over the Berlin Wall with this brash, nervy girl who'd never seen the world and been equal parts fascinated and terrified by it. She'd been so young then. But these days she had seen and done more things than most people would ever accomplish at twice her age, and with that experience she'd grown up.

"You wanna head back to the city?" Napoleon offered, sensing the conversation had lapsed beyond the point at which he could pick it up again.

Gaby nodded, pushing off the side of the car with her hip to wander towards the edge of the road, staring out across the fields. A whimsy of wind sent her ponytail bobbing. Releasing a heavy breath, Gaby tugged her hair free and shook it loose, the strands glowing copper in the last light of sunset.

Listening to the crickets chirp and harmonize with the drone of cicadas, Napoleon sighed. Waited her out. Eventually she turned to him, then wordlessly climbed back into the car. So he got in and started to drive. Ten minutes after he hit the highway, she fell asleep again. Since she'd said nothing about a hotel he just drove home, gently nudging her awake after he parked and leading her up to his flat, heading for the kitchen while he listened to her wander off, looking around. He left her to it. It wasn't that he trusted her not to snoop, because she would, but he trusted her to deal with whatever she found, and it wasn't like he had any big secrets from her anyways.

As he was digging out a pot to make spaghetti he heard the shower turn on. A minute later Gaby wandered into the kitchen wrapped in a towel.

"The shower temperature isn't—" she began.

"Yeah, it's finicky. You have to..." he mimed twisting the knobs just so. Gaby gave him a blank look. "It'll be easier if I just do it."

She peeked over his shoulder while he fussed with the taps, as if she was planning on doing this again later, for herself. Before he could overthink that he returned to the kitchen, managing to have things nearly ready by the time she re-emerged, having stolen one of his t-shirts to wear. They said little while they ate, which seemed to suit both of them just fine.

"How long are you here?" Napoleon finally asked her when he rose to clear the table.

"It's a bank holiday," she said vaguely, sidling up to him next to the sink, watching him begin to wash the dinner plates.

Silence once again hung between them. Gaby snatched the dish towel off the handle of the oven, hopped up to sit on the counter, and dutifully dried everything he passed over. He was just about to offer her a glass of wine when she spoke.

"What do you think Illya's doing right now?"

It had been a while since they'd done this. Not that Napoleon had stopped thinking about it regularly, and he suspected Gaby hadn't either, but at some point in the past couple of years the topic had grown too tender for them to prod at so frequently in their calls. So it took him a second to answer.

"If he's out in the field, no clue. Asleep in bed, if he's at home."

"With his family," Gaby provided a little too quietly, her gaze dipping to the floor, like she'd known this was what he would say but hadn't really wanted him to say it. "Do you think..." She bit her lip. "Do you think he thinks about us?"

"Of course he does."

"The way we think about him?"

Napoleon didn't know that. He didn't even understand his own feelings about Illya most of the time, couldn't tease out a clear thread among the tangle of lust and longing and hurt and separation. But somehow he knew that whatever he felt, Gaby felt more or less the same.

"I think," Napoleon began carefully, "that he's reaching out to you now, and that must count for something."

With an indecisive motion of her shoulders Gaby turned away, heading for the bedroom where, when Napoleon followed, he discovered she'd put her suitcase. It wasn't like he had a spare room, and even if he did this is still what he would've wanted. Though it was a little on the early side for him to go to bed the time difference had clearly caught up with Gaby, who yawned, eyeing him as if whatever confidence she'd had earlier which had driven her to assume she'd be sleeping in his bed had suddenly vanished. So Napoleon flicked back the covers and told her to make herself at home, then stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the bathroom with her while he brushed his teeth and she flossed.

"You know," Gaby told him, quiet, once they'd settled into bed together, staring at him from the next pillow over. "Illya didn't just reach out to me. He gave me a message that I could only understand half of without you. Whatever this is, he wants you to be there too."

* * *

In the morning he made pancakes but kept neglecting his duties at stove to sneak glances at Gaby sitting at the table, her face turned to the golden sun shining through the faintly dusty window, her eyes closed in contentment. She'd stolen another one of his shirts to wear. On the inside of her thighs, peeking out below the hem of her sleeping shorts, he could see the faint red hickey he left there when they first woke up, the sight now sending liquid heat pooling in his stomach; nothing urgent, but 'breakfast' had been decisively displaced from his top priorities. He wanted her above him again, below him, around him, wanted to taste her skin and feel her body ripple against his in a breathless laugh when he traced that ticklish spot on her sides. He wanted to tell some foolish joke just for her throaty little chuckles, for the way her face would sometimes scrunch up if he said something just the right shade of silly. He wanted her. Wanted her here with him. They'd been subsisting on phone calls for so long that he'd barely even had the chance to consider what life would be like if, instead of rushed visits on bank holidays or layovers, one of them just...stayed.

He wondered if this was what it was like to be in love.

Then, after that thought registered, he wondered if he _was_ in love.

While he silently staggered under the weight of this, Gaby turned, eyes blinking open lazily, her lips curling into a grin when she caught his eyes. Napoleon's heart didn't know whether to stop or race.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," Gaby pointed out, "and I think you're burning the pancakes."

Napoleon swore, flipping the over-browned pancakes off the pan, but then Gaby was snorting and laughing at him and getting up, looping her arms around his waist and pressing her forehead to the space between the top of his shoulder blades, which made everything better.

"Foolish man," she murmured, muffled against his back. "A girl could starve to death like this."

"A girl could make her own breakfast," he retorted, surprised. Gaby must've been feeling exceptionally at peace; she didn't often joke about hunger. She had enough bad memories of it.

"I didn't come all this way just to feed myself. " Gaby tugged the strap of his apron, the new one that had arrived last year with no return address but postmarked from Norway, which was adorned with pretty little daisies. Napoleon had no idea if she'd sent it or Illya and didn't want to ask. "Besides," she continued, drawing back so she could urge him around to face her, "the faster you make breakfast, the faster you can give that hickey on my thigh a new friend." She punctuated this by popping up onto her tiptoes and pressing a fleeting kiss to his lips, grinning like a shark, hungry, sharp, fierce, captivating.

If this wasn't love, Napoleon decided right then, he truly couldn't fathom what the hell else it could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may (or more likely may not) have noticed that I have re-upped the chapter count to 5. Same amount of content as previously planned, so you won't be waiting any longer for the end, just redistributing where it all goes.


	4. 1971

### 1971 - June

Illya's watch must have stopped. He had been waiting for what was surely an hour, maybe two, yet his watch showed only five minutes had passed since he last glanced at the door of the hotel room.

He was, perhaps, nervous.

He didn't know if Gaby received his message, if she kept her cipher pad, if she was willing to see him, if she and Cowboy were even on speaking terms. He didn't know whether one of them would betray him, if M.I.6 or the C.I.A. were waiting outside, waiting to pounce. All he knew was that there were only two people on earth he could trust with what he was about to ask, and he needed them both.

Too jittery to sit, Illya walked a lap around the sofa. Glanced at his watch again. It hadn't even been a full minute. That couldn't possibly be right. Perhaps the old mechanism was starting to—

A knock at the door.

Reaching for his pistol, Illya stalked over. Cracked the door open. Gaby was there, staring up at him.

"Were you followed?" Illya demanded.

She scowled. "Only by him." Jerking her head back, she drew Illya's attention to the bulk of Solo's body behind her. "And we're not amateurs, Illya."

"Sorry," he muttered, stepping aside to let them in, taking a moment to stare while they walked past him. They both looked...older. It shouldn't have been a surprise, but his last glimpses of them had been so fleeting that whenever he thought of them he imagined them as they'd been in U.N.C.L.E., always pictured their younger selves. A hint of grey streaked Solo's temples now and the lines around his eyes had deepened a little. Time's effects on Gaby were more subtle, but she'd lost some of the baby-faced softness that had lingered on her all those years ago. The changes suited them both.

Suddenly they were returning Illya's stare. He wondered what they saw in him. Almost thought to ask before quashing the impulse as irrational and unseemly. Instead he gestured for them to sit. Gaby chose the sofa, joined a second later by Solo, who still hadn't said a word to him.

Illya swallowed. "Ah, thank you for coming. I wasn't sure..." Realizing he was still standing, towering over them, he went to sit in the chair opposite the sofa, followed by the wary eyes of his former partners. "I need..." Two more words and Illya's life would change forever. He could do this. He could. "I need to defect."

Silence.

"Why?" Solo questioned, openly suspicious.

"I learned recently, past two months, that I am under watch. The second main directorate, counterintelligence, they follow me. Bug me. They suspect I see foreign agents." Glancing at them, the irony was not lost on Illya. "And now they are right, I suppose."

Neither Gaby nor Solo responded to his rueful attempt at humour. Gaby raised an eyebrow, 'keep going'.

"I have given them no evidence, but I know that they may find something against me, real or not. And I can't risk—I won't go to Siberia. I won't leave my son without a father."

Gaby's jaw tightened. In the next instant Solo turned to her, leaving Illya wondering if he was watching her closely enough to detect the slight movement or if he was so attuned to her moods that he'd anticipated her reaction. Illya didn't know how to feel about either possibility.

"And what about your wife?" asked Gaby through clenched teeth.

Illya grimaced. "Nadya is not... On paper we are still married because this is better for both our careers. Divorce is frowned upon, especially for agents. But she lives with her parents since last year." Solo began to make a noise, whether judgement or sympathy Illya didn't know because he cut it off. "We decided this together. The whole marriage, after she got pregnant, it was rushed. We tried very hard but we just couldn't... She realized that she has different goals for her life apart from just being a mother, which is what society expects. She loves Lyova, but she isn't... He lives with me, unless I'm away on mission, and this is best for everyone."

Hollowed out, Illya dropped his gaze to the floor, unable to continue everting his failed marriage for their scrutiny.

"But if you leave, won't there be reprisals?" Solo pointed out. "She'll have a hard time convincing them she didn't know."

"This is my big hesitation. But with her father's position, I think he will be able to protect her."

"Because that worked out great for _your_ father," Gaby muttered, shrugging unrepentantly when Solo fixed her with a disapproving look.

"It's a different time," Illya responded, stunned by her unexpected attack, regarding her with fresh wariness. "And I think I know our political situation better than _you_."

Gaby just glared at him, unconvinced. Seeming to sense trouble, Solo interjected by asking for Illya's escape plans.

"Two months from now, I have vacation time. Have received permission to take Lyova to visit East Berlin. Have a distant cousin there. We'll cross the border."

Shaking her head, Gaby gestured to Solo. "He barely got me out of East Berlin alive, and that wasn't with a three-year-old in tow. This is suicide, you're going to get—"

"Yeah, but I did," Solo cut in.

Gaby blinked. "Did what?"

"Got you out," he said with a hitch of his shoulders, like he didn't want to make a big deal of his accomplishment but he'd still like some acknowledgement of it. "It was possible then, and that was before I had you two on my side." He waited for Gaby to concede his point with a tip of her head. "So, Peril, give us the details."

* * *

After the trio finished hashing things out a lull fell between them. It was now late and the room, lit only by a bilious lamp in the corner, felt smaller than before. Gaby and Solo were still sitting next to each other. If anything they'd gotten closer, almost pressed together so that they'd occasionally brush each other with an elbow or a shoulder. Illya watched them from the opposite side of the coffee table, trying not to notice or care about their proximity.

"Are you sure about all of this?" Solo broke the silence to ask.

Illya nodded. He was as sure as he could be given the alternative was at best a labour camp and at worst a one-way trip down to the basement of the K.G.B. headquarters.

"And you're sure you just want the two of us?" Gaby pressed. "We'd have so many more resources if I could just ask my—"

With a decisive shake of his head Illya silenced her. "No, no. Too many moles. C.I.A., M.I.6, G.C.H.Q, everywhere. You have no idea. And I don't—" he bit his lip, delaying his next thought until he was certain he wanted it said aloud, "This isn't politics for me. If some agency helps, they'll own me, or at least they'll think they do."

It was only after Illya said it that he supposed by asking his partners for help, he was giving himself to them, in a way. His son, too. Something skittered uncertainly in his chest.

"Okay," Gaby said, though she still looked reluctant. "We'll do it your way." She sighed, seemingly already exhausted by the prospect of what they'd be doing in a couple of months, and slouched back against the sofa, ending up leaning into Solo's shoulder, though Illya couldn't tell if she'd aimed for him or not. Whatever her intentions, Solo responded by looping his arm around her waist, the motion unhurried and with an easy confidence, like he had no doubt she'd accept.

Illya stared across the space between him and them, openly gaping, emotion shooting up and down his spine without any clear direction. _This_ , whatever it was, did not exist the last time he saw them together.

He'd told himself that they would have moved on during all of these years apart, with their own lives, their own relationships, perhaps even more. After all, he'd done the same. Somehow, though, it had never occurred to him that the person they found might be each other. Irrationally, he itched to yank them apart at the same time he wanted to throw himself into the middle of their embrace. For perhaps the first time he staggered under the full weight of just how much he'd lost in eight years away from them. He didn't regret it in the end because those years gave him Lev, the best thing that had ever happened to him, but he could only look at Gaby and Solo for a few seconds before the nauseating envy in his throat forced him to glance away.

After a long moment of silence, feeling like death, Illya heard them stir. Heard Solo murmur 'you okay?', soft, for her alone, and listened to Gaby confirm this with a throaty hum, beyond the need for words, the whole exchange quietly intimate.

Though Illya had been longing to see them for so many years, suddenly he needed to run.

"I need to—I have to leave," he said, finding himself standing before he'd consciously decided to move. "Now."

Both turned to stare at him, perfectly in sync. Of course.

"Okay..." Gaby said, frowning as she also rose to her feet. "So, we'll see you in Berlin?"

Illya nodded. "See you in Berlin." He stood and watched them leave, Gaby looking back like she wanted to say something but the moment passing unfulfilled as she shook herself and slipped out the door. Solo followed her without a backwards glance.

Two months to go. Just two more months until, one way or another, everything changed again for him.

Time to talk to Lyova.

* * *

On the way back from meeting Illya, Napoleon managed to finagle from his bosses a two-day stop in London. So he flew back with Gaby, got to go to sleep with her faintly snoring next to him, got to wake up to the sound of her humming along to Creedence Clearwater Revival while she made breakfast, got to sidle up behind her at the kitchen sink and drop a kiss to the back of her neck, murmuring into her skin that he'd be back after a quick meeting.

"Are you going to be gone all day?" she asked. "I want to go for a drive this afternoon."

"No, should be back in a couple of hours. Can we try out the bike?" For the last few months of phone calls she'd been telling him about the motorcycle she'd been restoring, some old barn-find Triumph that she'd gotten for cheap because it had been in such bad shape.

Gaby shook her head, drying a few glasses that had been left out on the dish rack overnight. "The kick start is giving me problems, I just haven't had time to deal with it." When he made a disappointed noise she turned, narrowing her eyes at him. "Why do you care?"

"Can't a guy want to see his—" Napoleon panicked, the word 'girlfriend' halfway on his tongue when he saw the blank face Gaby made when she seemed to realize what he was about to say. For all their progress they hadn't had that talk yet, hadn't put labels or boundaries to anything. "—uh, can't a guy want to see a sexy bike in action with its equally sexy mechanic without an ulterior motive?"

With an amused huff, Gaby rolled her eyes. "Buy me dinner at least. And maybe then I'll see about getting the starter sorted tomorrow afternoon, at least enough for a little test-drive before you fly out."

"Okay. Back by lunch, darling," he sing-songed in his best overly domestic voice.

Gaby laughed and threw her dish towel at him. Napoleon grinned all the way to his meeting.

When he got back Gaby declined to tell him their destination, just setting off through London until the city began to fade into the countryside, row-houses replaced by sheep fields and woods, her wayfinding certain enough that he rapidly guessed this wasn't an aimless scenic tour but a quest to someplace deeply familiar to her.

Eventually coming to a lane, stopping long enough for Napoleon to get the gate, Gaby told him where they were. He'd never thought about what Waverly's retirement would be like, but somehow it still surprised him to pull up to a quiet old country house set on a hill, overlooking a valley. As Gaby parked what sounded like a whole pack of dogs began to bark from the house.

Waverly, too, seemed surprised when he opened the door. "Hello, Gaby. Mr. Solo, it's been too long," he greeted them, voice raised over the din of the dogs. "To what do I owe this entirely unannounced visit?" There was a hint of English sass there, pointing out that Gaby hadn't called ahead.

And in typical fashion, she ignored this completely. "We were passing by."

"Passing by."

"Out here, in the middle of nowhere."

"Yes."

"Even Solo, who does not live on this continent?"

"Yes. Can we come in or not?" she added with the defiant, faintly irked air of a teenager being interrogated about why they were out so late last night.

"I suppose I'd best put the kettle on, then." Opening the door, Waverly disappeared into the house, in the process releasing what was, indeed, a small pack of dogs; a couple of Labradors, three beagles and a silky-haired spaniel. The beagles were baying and the spaniel squirming about trying to lick Napoleon's hands while Gaby was nearly bowled over by one of the Labradors, sidestepping it at the last second with an annoyed glare. She never did care much for dogs. Napoleon liked them, though, so he bent down to pat all the heads he could reach, giving Gaby a nod when she shot him a relieved look and slipped into the house untrampled. Following her down the hall led Napoleon to a spacious kitchen, in which Waverly was setting the kettle on the stove before inviting them to sit at the table. They settled into small talk for a few minutes, Waverly filling Gaby in on the progress of his kitchen garden and asking after her motorcycle. Sitting next to Gaby, quietly sipping the tea Waverly soon offered, Napoleon got the sense that those two were in touch but didn't visit all that often. Gaby was evidently comfortable here though, getting up at one point to rummage through the cupboards for biscuits, which neither she nor Waverly made anything of.

After a while, though, Gaby got down to business. "We have a favour to ask."

Waverly seemed unsurprised. "Need I remind you that I'm retired now?"

"You still have connections. We need passports."

Dismissively, Waverly took a sip of tea. "You've got passports. Both of you. More than any one person should legally be allowed. What do you need me for?"

"No, we need new passports."

"So put in a request at the office."

Gaby made a frustrated noise. "We need this done quietly. I'm asking _you_ , personally."

That made Waverly pause. "Gaby, are you in some sort of tr—?"

"No, nothing like that. We're both fine." Gaby idly set her hand on Napoleon's arm, warm through the fabric of his shirt. "But I made a promise I wouldn't tell anyone about this. We both did."

Waverly's eyes flicked in a precise triangle: Gaby's face, her hand on Napoleon's arm, then Napoleon's face. His eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

"What you're asking for is illegal. Possibly treasonous. I retired precisely because I'd had enough of these sorts of situations."

The expression that settled on Gaby's face wasn't one that Napoleon had seen often; a burning mixture of determination and desperation. But he knew that when she got like this she was _dangerous_.

"Sir," she began, staring Waverly dead in the eye, "I did my job for you for a long time and I did it well. I waited behind that damn wall for two whole years. When you told me to betray them, I did. When I had misgivings about the work after U.N.C.L.E. I trusted you when you said we were doing the right thing. I didn't ask you for much but I'm asking you now. We need this. _I_ need this."

For a moment Waverly looked like he was going to object. Then he sagged, shaking his head ruefully. "I shouldn't be letting you talk me into this."

"She has that effect on people," Napoleon interjected drily.

"Well, glad to know it's not just me, then. Very well, two passports, coming up."

"Three, actually," Gaby added.

"Three?"

"Yes, for us and one for—"

Gaby was interrupted, then, when the dogs suddenly roused to another flurry of barking, scampering towards what must've been the back door, which thumped open a few seconds later. Then a voice called through the house.

“I'm back. Couldn't find any scallions but I got some—"

A man walked around the corner of the kitchen and froze, eyeing Napoleon and Gaby. He was probably about Waverly's age, with silver hair, wearing a soft, hunter green sweater. The dogs were winding through his legs, affectionate and relaxed. He turned to Waverly with a questioning look.

"We have visitors," Waverly explained rather unnecessarily. "Gaby, of course, and this is Mr Solo. He used to work with Gaby and I. Solo, this is Andrew Farnham, my friend."

"Oh," said the man, still a bit shaken. "Right. Pleasure to meet you," he added, striding over and offering his hand to Napoleon.

"Pleasure is all mine. Apologies. When Gaby dragged me out here—"

"Hey!" she protested.

"—I didn't realize we'd be intruding."

"No, no, it's fine," Andrew said. "Just surprised. Hey kiddo. We missed you at Easter," he greeted Gaby, making her roll her eyes.

"Will you ever stop calling me that?" she grumbled, not much malice in it. "I've been busy. And yes, I promise I'll be here for Christmas," she added, cutting him off.

"I'll hold you to that, even if I have to drag you here myself." Andrew winked at her, and Gaby snorted. "Besides, this one,” he jerked his head towards Waverly, “gets all mopey when you miss holidays.” Waverly made a halfhearted noise of protest, which Andrew ignored. “Right, well, I was actually just about to head out with the dogs, so I'll leave you lot to it. Mr Solo, a pleasure to finally put a face to the name."

"Waverly's told you about me?" Napoleon asked, surprised.

"Both of them have. Gaby's stories are decidedly more incriminating, though." Andrew eyed him for a second, then grinned. "Anyways, I'm off. And it'd better not be another few months before I see you again, kiddo."

Gaby waved him off with promises to visit sooner then turned to Napoleon. "Do you have the—?"

"The what?"

"The photo."

"Why would I have that? I thought you had it."

"I put it in your jacket pocket before we left the house. I didn't want to lose it in my purse."

"Well, how am I supposed to know that?" Napoleon reached into his inside pocket where, sure enough, his fingers met paper, which he pulled out and offered to her, watching as she slid the little square photo of Lev across the table.

"We need one for him, too."

Waverly's expression turned alarmed. "Gaby, who is this?"

"I can't tell you."

"No, no, this is too much, I won't—"

"Sir, whatever you're worried about, it's not that. We have permission from...from his father." Gaby took a second to choose her words. "You helped me escape once. Help me help him. Please."

Waverly stared at her, indecision plain on his face. After an endless moment, he sighed. "This goes against all of my instincts. But very well. What information do you need on these passports?"

They spent the next few minutes providing the relevant names and other info with which Waverly would furnish their passports. After they wrapped up, Waverly slumped back in his chair and eyed the two of them across the table. Once again, Napoleon only then realized that Gaby is leaning into his shoulder, just a little. This time, Waverly seemed to come to a decision.

"Right, I'll get on with all of that. In the meantime, may I speak to Gaby for a moment?"

It was as clear a dismissal as Napoleon had ever heard from Waverly so he obeyed, excusing himself to look around the gardens. As he went down the hall, though, he caught the faint sounds of their conversation.

"So, you and Solo?"

Gaby groaned. "Oh God, please don't."

"I just wanted to make sure—"

For once feeling guilty about eavesdropping, Napoleon slipped outside. The gardens were a little overgrown but beautiful, the house situated on a slight rise that provided a panoramic view of the surrounding fields. In the distance he could see a person with a bunch of dogs; probably Andrew. Napoleon thought about that, trying to decide whether or not he was surprised. Waverly had always been exceptionally private, too professional for an easy reading of his life. So Napoleon hadn't expected this but nor was it especially shocking. It simply slotted into what little he knew of Waverly's life without disrupting the pre-existing foundations he'd built.

Continuing to wander around, Napoleon paused by an old oak tree, growing just as the crest of the hill began to subside back down. It was breathtakingly quiet. Too quiet for him, he suspected, but he could see the appeal. He wondered whether Gaby would like to live somewhere like this. She'd spent her whole life in big cities. He couldn't quite figure out whether she'd be bored by endless miles of fields or if she'd find some peace.

"Ah, there you are. Thought we'd lost you," called out Waverly's voice, interrupting Napoleon's musings. "Gaby wanted to go say goodbye to Andrew before you left, so I thought I'd keep you company. Let the two of them catch up."

"How long—?" Napoleon began to ask before stopping, realizing the intrusiveness of the question.

Coming level with him, Waverly gave him a searching look. He must've been satisfied with what he found because he smiled, faint, nostalgic. "Since we were fifteen. We met at Eton. Long time ago, now."

Napoleon let out a breath. "Wow."

"Yes, quite," Waverly said wryly. "Now then, you'll have to indulge a doddery old man for a moment, namely me, because Gaby is the closest thing I'll ever have to a daughter. So, allow me to ask, what are your intentions towards her?"

Taking a moment, Napoleon considered his words. "We're still figuring that out."

"This isn't some fling for you?"

"God, no." Napoleon shook his head. "I wouldn't... We've already spent our time apart. But for me it's just... _her_. Always her. I just keep coming back."

( _And Illya?_ , some small part of him whispered, but that voice was uncertain, weak, a little defeated.)

Seemingly satisfied, Waverly nodded, then wandered a few steps away. "You know, if you'd asked me back then how I thought things would play out between the three of you I would've put roughly equal odds on her and Kuryakin or you and Kuryakin. Never would've guessed this. You three always did have a way of surprising me."

"Well, we didn't exactly—" Cutting himself off, Napoleon considered just how much damage he could do with the thing he was about to say, then said it anyways. "We didn't exactly have a chance to figure things out with Illya. Either of us."

Flinching a tad guiltily, Waverly stared at the grass. "I know it doesn't help, but I did fight for U.N.C.L.E., tried to save it. The politics were all wrong after that bloody Brezhnev business, the Russians reshuffled their top positions and the new fellow didn't like the program. Once they were out it rather lost the thing that made it special in the first place." His eyes flicked back up to Napoleon and he smiled, but with an odd, melancholic twist. "I am sorry, for what it's worth. I can't say I fully understood everything that was going on, but I was very much aware that you three were trying to sort out some very personal, very complicated things. I'd rather hoped you'd found some peace with each other before it all went to hell, but from what I've gathered from Gaby it seems everything was rather..."

"Unresolved?"

"Yes, quite." Waverly turned away again. "I'm glad you two still found each other, though." He began to trudge off down the hill, towards the distant shapes of Gaby and Andrew.

"Sir?" Napoleon jogged to catch up. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"How... With Andrew, how did you... know?"

A flash of bemusement passed across Waverly's face. "I've always maintained that anyone who claims they 'just knew' is a bloody liar. You make a choice. Take a leap. Hope that the person you're leaping towards is ready and willing to catch you. And if they do, then you have to _keep_ choosing them. You choose every day when you wake up and say to yourself 'Yes, he always leaves his damn toenail clippings on the floor, but I shan't end things over that today'. And then he makes you tea and you get on with your day and at some point you hopefully remember again why you fell in love with him."

"And you two have been doing that for forty years?"

"More or less. We've had our rough patches, don't get me wrong. We have, how did you put it? Spent our time apart. But as you _also_ very eloquently put it, for me it's just...him. Always him I keep choosing."

Forty years with one person. Even as he himself crept towards fifty years of living, Napoleon still struggled to imagine that. Perhaps sensing this, Waverly chuckled.

"Don't overthink it, Solo. All anyone's doing is muddling through day-by-day and hoping they're getting it right. And there's nothing urgent, is there?" Then Waverly froze, giving him a stern look. "She's not—?"

"What? God, no. She'd kill me."

Waverly sniffed. "Yes, she would rather, wouldn't she? So why the interest if not that?"

This was another moment Napoleon used to pick his words carefully. Reaching the bottom of the first hill, they gazed around at the grassy fields, their view of their respective partners hidden by the next rise. In the privacy of this valley, he spoke. "Sanders finally left me for greener, higher ranking pastures. My new boss recommended me for a liaison post in London. With M.I.6. Had a meeting over there this morning. Six months to start, and they might keep me on if it goes well."

"And you're worried that living in the same city may be moving too fast after eight years?" Waverly asked drily. Napoleon just shrugged, so Waverly made a thoughtful noise then continued. "You know, you're the only man she's ever mentioned. Well, Kuryakin at first, but as time went by... Apart from him she's never said a word to me about anyone else. And she's _certainly_ never brought anyone else home to us." Chuckling, Waverly began to walk again. "Andrew will be over the moon, I'll have you know. I'd bet money that he's down there right now, telling her how happy he is that she's finally found someone and how he knew all along it would be you. Good lord, he'll be insufferable; he did get that one right."

Napoleon laughed, not so much from the faint humour as just releasing the overwhelming knot of anxiety that'd been twisting in his stomach. "So, I should tell her?"

"You should tell her. Soon. I think she might be a bit more ready than you expect. You always were the one to mollycoddle her, between you and Kuryakin."

"What? C'mon, Illya spoiled her rotten."

"He's not the one who was forever stealing pretty baubles for her and then, God only knows why, letting her assume they were from Kuryakin." A pause for a stern look punctuated this statement. "Don't think I didn't know. That was a bloody headache to explain in expense reports, reimbursing shops for all of your thievery."

Napoleon had barely remembered that. It had been in the early days, when his relationship with Gaby had been in some ways much simpler and in other ways much more complicated. He’d liked her in ways he’d known he wouldn't pursue, liked Peril in ways he knew could only lead to ruin, had no good outlet for either and so had taken to nudging them towards each other in a twisted, vicarious sort of courtship, thus the secretive gifts. For a while it had been enough; watching Gaby’s confused pleasure at the presents, watching the way Illya blushed so prettily as, flustered, baffled, he unsuccessfully denied any role in it. But then it had become too real, both Napoleon’s feelings for Illya and Illya’s feelings for Gaby, which tore the whole business apart. Still, he neither wished to explain all of that to Waverly nor felt compelled to do so. He shrugged, unrepentant. "Had to keep you busy, didn't we?"

"Put me in an early grave from all the stress, more like, the three of you."

They crested the hill then and came into view of Gaby and Andrew. Gaby was throwing a stick for one of the dogs, laughing. Napoleon found himself smiling at the sound, then found himself watched by Waverly, who wore a fond, paternal expression.

"Solo, you say you're figuring things out, but you don't look at her like that. You look at her like a man who's already done his own figuring but isn't sure that she's arrived at the same result. Just tell her."

"Is that an order, sir?"

Waverly snorted. "You know what? I think I may actually make it one. Tell her. Life's too short for any of you to spend another decade faffing about waiting for the other to work up the nerve."

Napoleon tipped his head. "Well then. Yes, sir."

### 1971 - July

It was a hot summer day when Napoleon stood back at Checkpoint Charlie, staring at the streets of East Berlin just a few feet away, while he considered all that had happened since the last time he'd been here. Back then, eight years ago, he'd been alone, slowly allowing the C.I.A. to squeeze the life out of him until he hadn't cared much if he'd lived or died. Illya had gotten him right when he'd said Napoleon was on a leash. Eight years ago he'd had no friends, no plan for his future, no goals for himself beyond surviving his sentence.

Everything had changed. For all of them, he knew. Gaby had confessed to him the previous night, in their hotel room in West Berlin, that she hadn't been back since he'd gotten her out and didn't know how to feel about it now. Her nerves had recovered admirably, though. Now, as his passport was checked, Gaby leaned into his side, curling her arm into his, chatting in German with the guard about how long it had been since she'd been able to visit her parents, seemingly at complete ease.

She tugged at his arm, snapping him out of his thoughts. "Darling, we can go through. You really need to pay more attention."

Indeed, the guard was giving them a faintly impatient look and Napoleon realized he'd been caught up in his own head. He apologized, turned, and, together with Gaby, walked back into East Berlin.

* * *

In the safehouse, Napoleon checked his watch again. Gaby's eyes kept flicking to the wall clock, though he wasn't certain whether she thought it might be bugged or she was just worried. Illya was late. He was never late.

Then there was a knock at the door.

Without a word Napoleon rose to answer it as Gaby stayed at the kitchen table, seemingly frozen. He pressed his forehead to the inside of the door, taking two seconds to force his breathing to slow, then opened it. Two pairs of blue eyes greeted him. Napoleon stepped aside, letting them in before anyone spoke, then turning to Illya once he'd closed the door behind them.

Illya gave him a quirk of a smile. "Cowboy."

"Peril," Napoleon replied with his own attempted smile, then crouching to greet Lev. "Hey, Lev. I'm a friend of your dad," he said, looking the kid over properly for the first time. Before this he'd only ever known Lev from two photos, the baby picture Gaby had shared with him and the updated photo Illya had given them for Lev's fake passport, neither of which prepared him for the reality of having the boy standing there before him, baby pudge of the older photo gone, replaced by a wiry frame with a skinned knee which foretold of restlessness, and a mop of dark, wavy hair. But his eyes were the same, all Illya.

"You're Cowboy," Lev piped up, as if they were old friends.

"Uh, yeah, that's me," he managed to reply, having to clear his throat around the sudden lump of emotion blocking it. God, this was Illya's _son_. "He's told you about me?"

Lev nodded. "He tells me stories. He says you are the most ob... obsatint...opasent..." He tugged at Illya's trouser leg. "Papa, kak eto ska—?"

"Obstinate," Illya provided before absently reminding Lev, "shoes."

While Lev kicked off his shoes he held out to Napoleon a mangled lump of brown fabric that he'd had tucked under his arm. "This is Fedya. My lion. He's my best friend."

"Pleasure to meet you, Fedya," Napoleon responded, shaking what he hoped to be the paw of the much-loved plush toy, starting now to notice that Lev's English was actually quite solid. That could only help them today.

Lev giggled at Napoleon's antics, tiny nose wrinkling up as he grinned. For all the years Napoleon had spent ambivalent about the idea of having kids, he suddenly began to suspect that knowing Lev was going to change his whole life and for the better.

He was still leaning down with Lev when the boy turned his head, Napoleon following his gaze to find Gaby standing at the other end of the hall, openly watching the three of them, something raw, just the slightest bit terrified, in her expression as she stared at Lev. But before the adults could cut through the moment Lev was speaking.

"Gaby?" he asked, more hesitant than he'd been with Napoleon, like he could feel her wariness and couldn't quite make sense of it.

"Oh... Hi, Lev," she said, waving awkwardly, then glancing to Napoleon and Illya with a look that begged for rescue.

"Lyova, come," Illya instructed, tone flat, sweeping past Gaby into the kitchen without looking at her.

Once they were all settled around the table Gaby flipped on the radio, turning it up loud enough that Lev made a sour face, but also loud enough to make their conversations more difficult to eavesdrop on, giving them an opportunity to quietly go over the plan, the backup plan, and the _other_ backup plan, then spend far too much time fussing with the fake entry stamp on Lev's fake passport, making sure it matched the one's on Gaby and Napoleon's. Illya helped Lev change clothes, stuck a cap on his head, and then sat back to give him a serious look.

"You know what you need to do today, right, Lyova?"

"Yes, papa."

"And you'll listen to Gaby and Solo right away, no complaining?"

"Yes, papa, I will," Lev answered, peevish, as if Illya had already asked him all of this twenty times before. For some reason it reminded Napoleon, for a brief instant, of Gaby, and he had to smother a grin.

"Good," Illya praised, removing Lev's new cap for a moment, setting one oversized hand atop his head and stroking his hair. He glanced up at the other two and Napoleon nodded. It was time, and they all knew it. Illya swallowed, turned back to Lev, his eyes shining as he tugged the boy into his lap. Only because Napoleon was sitting right next to them could he hear what Illya whispered in Russian, breathing the words into Lev's messy hair.

 _"You are so brave, Lyovushka. My lion cub. I’m so proud of you."_ But seeming to realize his solemnity was frightening Lev, Illya drew back, a smile pasted on his face. "And once it's done, you get Cowboy to buy you a treat, yes? Anything you want."

"Anything?" Lev questioned in awe. "Candy?"

"Yes, you can have candy. One." Illya held up a single finger to Napoleon. "Just one candy bar. And make sure he brushes teeth."

"Noted." Napoleon forced himself to smile, struck again that Illya was a _dad_. He started to get up, leading them out, when Illya fell back at the kitchen doorway.

"Can you go help him with his shoes?" Illya asked while he paused to wrangle Lev's new hat back onto him, then flicking his eyes to Gaby, who was watching all of this wordlessly.

Napoleon agreed, ambling after Lev who was already sprinting down the hall in a flurry of stomping footsteps, launching into a rambling story about his friend Masha, who was a dog. Half-listening to Lev, Napoleon could hear his partners murmuring to each other in the kitchen, itched to look back to them even though he knew whatever was passing between them was theirs alone. He was just managing to finish up Lev's second shoe when Gaby and Illya wandered out.

"...yes?" Illya was asking her, setting a hand on her shoulder.

Gaby nodded, her lips pulling into a small but sincere smile. "Yeah." After a second's hesitation she wrapped Illya in a fierce hug. "Be careful," she muttered into his chest.

After Gaby pulled away they all started to get ready, Lev still chattering about Masha the dog throughout. When Napoleon glanced away from him for a second he found Illya watching the two of them. The next second Illya asked Gaby to take Lev out to the car. She squinted at him but agreed, going past them to slip out the back door.

"Peril?" Napoleon quizzed.

"Napoleon," Illya responded, heavy and thick. It was the first time Illya had ever used his real first name and Napoleon tried not to be sick. "Do you know the meaning of the name?"

Napoleon blinked, confused by the non-sequitur. "Whose?"

"Yours. 'Napoleon'. I read a history book once, it said that the name means 'Lion of Naples'." Illya let out a soft snort. "As you can imagine, it is not a popular name in Russia."

"Yeah, the original Napoleon did try to invade you guys.”

Illya gave him a look, like this bizarre conversation had been meant to convey something important which Napoleon was just not getting. "You have not forgotten all of your Russian, no?"

"I still got it."

"The word 'Lev', what does this mean?"

"It means..." Napoleon's stomach dropped a few inches, "'lion'..."

"When we found out we have a son, I knew I had to name him after the best, most _obstinate_ man I know." Illya was smiling down at him, blue eyes shining, and just like that, for all the hurt and years apart, Napoleon realized that he'd never fully stopped loving Illya. "So," continued Illya, setting a hand on his shoulder as he struggled to hold himself together, "look after him."

"Of course."

But Illya shook his head like once again he hadn't understood. "Not just today. I mean, if—if something happens, if I don't... Please, _look after my son_."

Oh _God_. Napoleon was reduced to giving a fitful nod by way of response. "I will," he eventually managed to croak. "I promise. But you're gonna make it, okay, Peril? If you don't I'll track you down and kick your ass myself for making me worry. Hell, Gaby would too."

Illya's expression flashed, for a moment, into an almost true grin. "Even from the start, if you two are working together, I can never win against you," he lamented fondly. Then he turned serious again. "Thank you, Cowboy." Using the hand still clasped on Napoleon's shoulder, Illya tugged him closer, and before he understood Illya's intent he was being kissed, quick but sincere. It was too much, not nearly enough, and Napoleon was so stunned that he barely responded before Illya was pulling away, gazing down at him with a sad half smile.

"That was–" Napoleon stammered.

"Something for us to talk about when I make it across." There was conviction in Illya's voice now, and even though Napoleon suspected it was put on for his sake, it still gave him hope. "Good luck."

"Same to you, Peril. See you on the other side."

* * *

As Napoleon neatly pulled the car out into the streets of East Berlin, Gaby couldn't help but glance back at the safehouse one last time, though she knew Illya would already be gone. But as she looked through the back window of the car, her eyes caught Lev, sitting in the back seat, staring at her quizzically. She swallowed, faced forward again.

"So, buddy," said Napoleon as he pulled up to a red light. "What's your name?"

"Liam. William Michaelson," answered Lev.

"Good, Liam. Where are you from?"

"Islington. That's in London, England."

Gaby sat silently as Napoleon continued to quiz Lev on his new fictional life, watching the streets of a home she hadn't seen in almost a decade roll by out the window. This was a bit south of her old stomping grounds in Prenzlauer Berg, but she still recognized the streets, equally struck by how much had stayed the same and how much had changed. Shops had come and gone, a few blocky Soviet-style apartments had risen where once there had been old houses or empty lots. Yet there was still the florist at which, walking down the street one day with some friends from ballet, she'd stopped to buy a few flowers for herself just because they'd been pretty and she'd been in a good mood. Many of those friends were probably still here. She didn't regret leaving, but that didn't mean she hadn't lost some things in the process.

Her musings were interrupted when Napoleon pulled off onto a side street so they could ditch the car. As he did so, he turned to ask Lev his last questions.

"And what do you call me?"

"Papa."

"And Gaby?"

"Mama."

For some reason, a blend of discomfort and incredulity and anxiety, Gaby nearly laughed. Never had she thought she'd _ever_ be called that. Perhaps she made a faint huff after all, because Napoleon fixed her with an odd look. But the moment passed, they all climbed out of the car, situating Lev between them on the sidewalk, who placidly took Napoleon's hand when he offered it.

"You okay?" he asked her quietly over Lev's head.

Gaby nodded. "Yeah. Let's go."

* * *

She and Napoleon had spent a couple of hours of the morning after getting through the checkpoint methodically ditching whatever Stasi tails they might have been assigned. So they were fairly certain they were unobserved now. Still, they began to repeat the process in reverse, abandoning the first car and walking a few blocks to hop on a tram, jumping off one stop later, doubling back, splitting up then slipping through crowds before reconnecting a few streets later. Unlike that morning, though, they had Lev trudging along next to them, his hand gripping tightly to Napoleon's hand or Gaby's skirt.

They stopped at another corner, Gaby quietly murmuring a new plan to split up to Napoleon while they waited for the light to turn green. "You take him, I'll meet you at the next block."

Napoleon nodded. Glanced down. "Hey, Liam?"

Lev looked up. "Yeah?"

"Coming with me for a bit, okay?"

Lev's only response was to release Gaby's skirt and lean into Napoleon's leg instead. Gaby gave Napoleon a quick look then turned off to the right, striding away from them without another glance back. She ambled past little restaurants and shops, pretending to window-browse here and there to blend in with the crowd, all going well until she hit the next corner to find two police officers standing right there. Before they saw her she smoothly turned back in the direction she'd come, praying that she'd attracted no notice, frantically trying to plan an alternate route to meet up with Napoleon and Lev. She didn't know this area of town quite so well, and so close to the river the old streets were sometimes laid out in strange, unpredictable configurations. Eventually, after taking a wrong turn and cutting through a park, she got her bearings again, setting off a few blocks to the meeting place.

When she finally spotted Napoleon in the crowd it took a few seconds for him to catch her eyes. He was scanning around, outwardly casual but alert, a slight frown on his face. Then he saw her and, for a brief moment, absolutely beamed with relief, like everything had become right in his world again now that she was back. Gaby shook off the desire to smile back, to try capturing that expression in her memory forever, instead pressing through the crowd until she was at her side again.

"Hey you," he said in greeting, still grinning a little then looking down, jostling Lev's hand. "We missed you."

"You were gone a long time," added Lev.

"Sorry, I ran into a couple of old friends and then I got a little lost." It was part of her pre-established code with Napoleon and, though his expression didn't betray him, the corners of his mouth tightened.

"They want to stop and chat?"

She shook her head. "No, I don't think they recognized me."

Napoleon nodded, beginning to set off down the street again.

* * *

Half an hour later, Gaby was sitting on a tram, Lev squirming in the seat next to her, when he suddenly spoke.

"Ya goloden.”

"English," she reminded him absently, eyes flicking in another sweep of the half-empty tram to see if anyone was paying attention to the Russian-speaking boy. Not a look from another passenger yet.

" _Hungry_ ," Lev insisted in a piercing plea, attracting a couple of stares including Napoleon, seated a few rows in front of them.

"Okay, okay, we'll get you something to eat," she tried to soothe, now reconsidering their plans to factor in a stop for food. Somewhere soon, too, based on the way Lev was looking up at her and clutching his lion toy.

Casually, Napoleon stood up and wandered down the tram, muttering "next stop" to her as he went to lean next to the back door. When the tram stopped she jumped off at the front door with Lev, circled the block, and met Napoleon at a bench, agreeing that Gaby and Lev would wait there while Napoleon went into the grocer's at the corner.

Gaby kicked her feet out, sighing a little, and glanced over at Lev. He'd watched Napoleon go but now he was observing the cars go by, a funny little frown on his small face.

"What kind of car is that?"

She followed his gaze. "A Trabi. Trabant," she replied absently, focused on surveilling the crowd.

Lev absorbed this solemnly, watching a few more of the ubiquitous scrap-heaps trundle by. "They look a little like a Moskvitch."

That made her pause. She blinked down at him. "You know cars?"

Nodding, Lev kicked his feet out then let them thump back against the bench. "I like cars. Is Trabi a good car?"

"No, they're total pieces of sh—er, garbage."

"Why?"

"They're slow. Noisy. If you front-end something they catch on fire. The gear-shift is atrocious."

Lev frowned. "Why are there so many?"

"They're cheap."

This seemed to require further thought. Lev went silent, head swivelling to follow more Trabis as they trundled down the street. Gaby hesitated, glancing over her shoulder to see if Napoleon was returning yet. He wasn't. Then she looked to Lev again. She didn't know how to talk to kids, but she thought of the disappointed look on Illya's face when she'd frozen upon first meeting Lev and resolved to at least try.

"What's your favourite car?"

"Volgas," Lev replied.

"Why?"

"They look cool. I like the..." his face scrunched up again, "on old ones, there is...olen."

"Olen?"

"I don't know the English."

Gaby thought, couldn't place the word in her still imperfect Russian. "I don't know that in Russian. German?"

Lev shook his head, looking frustrated, little hands curling up around Fedya.

"I worked on a Volga once," Gaby offered hesitantly.

That got Lev's attention. He looked up at her. "Really?"

"Yeah. Not common in East Germany but there was a Russian man in my neighbourhood, he brought his car with him. I had to adjust the carburetor, the choke was set wrong." He'd also hit on her and tried to underpay her for the work, but Lev probably didn't need to know that.

"What is 'carburetor'?"

Gaby smiled faintly. _This_ , at least, was comfortable territory for her. "So, do you know how an engine works?"

She was halfway through a very basic explanation of an internal-combustion engine when Napoleon slid onto the bench next to Lev, giving both of them a surprised look.

"Having fun?" he asked as he passed what appeared to be a simple sandwich with cold cuts over to Lev.

"Yeah. G—uh, mama is cool." Lev took the sandwich, nose wrinkling up skeptically, and gave it a cautious sniff. Gaby tried to ignore the lurch her heart gave hearing him actually call her 'mama' for the first time. "What is it?"

"I agree, she is cool. Ham and a bit of cheese and butter."

"I don't like ham."

Napoleon's solution was to retrieve the sandwich, extract the ham and place it in his own mouth, then return the now ham-less sandwich to Lev. "Problem solved. And if you eat that, I've got a banana with your name on it."

"And put Fedya down so you don't get butter all over him," Gaby added.

Despite looking less than convinced Lev begrudgingly set Fedya down next to her before tucking into the sandwich while the adults began plotting the next hour.

"Did you see any places you want to visit later?" Napoleon asked her.

"There was a cute restaurant two blocks back," she replied, their code for 'haven't seen any followers'.

"I saw a nice flower shop. That was a while ago, though, back in Friedrichshain." 'One follower, over an hour ago.' So they were probably doing well. "Do you want to go visit your father yet?"

"Not quite yet, but soon. I want to see him before dinner." Meaning that she thought they shouldn't quite head for Checkpoint Charlie yet. They couldn’t put it off forever, though.

Napoleon's grim expression indicated that he understood her feelings. They sat in silence while Lev dug into the banana, oblivious to their worry. By the end his face and hands were an absolute mess, but Napoleon just shrugged and cleaned him up with his pocket square, even though it would ruin the silk. Then they all rose, Lev reaching out until Gaby took his vaguely sticky hand, making for the nearest tram stop, at which Lev took one look at the stairs of the tram, then held his arms out to Napoleon for a lift. Napoleon bent down, scooping him up with a faint wince. Ever since whatever had happened a few years ago, when Napoleon had called her half dazed and too close to dead, he'd had a lingering issue with his shoulder that had never fully resolved. He hid it well, but Lev had been asking for these little boosts all morning and it was clearly starting to wear Napoleon down.

"I can get him next time," Gaby offered, stepping up next to them.

"Your back," he pointed out.

"My back is fine."

Napoleon looked briefly like he wanted to argue the point but just ended up shrugging, muttering something about "we'll deal with that when the time comes", then turning his attention back to their journey.

* * *

Forty minutes later they were at a u-bahn station doing one final hop-on-hop-off to throw any tails, nearly bungling the whole thing because Lev tripped, forcing Napoleon to bodily haul him up and drag him out of the train just as the door was closing.

"My _arm_ ," Lev groused, rubbing at where Napoleon grabbed him. "Hurts. Feet hurts. I'm tired." He’d been good all day, but their day was growing long, and Gaby had begun to sense his energy was waning.

"Sorry, buddy," Napoleon sighed. "You okay?" he asked as Gaby knelt down to inspect Lev's arm.

"You're okay. I know it's been a long morning. You can rest your feet for a minute when we're on the tram," she assured Lev.

"Want Fedya," was Lev's response.

"Okay," she agreed, turning to eye Napoleon's briefcase. "Where did you put Fedya?"

"What? I thought you had him."

Gaby froze, her mind galloping through the past three hours, stopping on that bench where Lev had eaten his sandwich. When _she_ had told Lev to set Fedya down. But she'd picked the toy up, right? She must have. Even as she was trying to convince herself of this, horror began creeping through her body at the realization that she might have just ruined everything. Their chance of escaping, and maybe so much more.

"I...I gave him to you," she insisted. "The bus on Alexanderstrasse."

"That was two hours ago. I gave him back to Lev ten minutes later. After that he was sitting with you."

"Gdye Fedya?" Lev whimpered, seeming to cotton on to their distress, looking exhausted and overheated and scared and _done_.

"Can you wait until later?" Gaby asked, already knowing that the toy was lost forever to them now. They couldn't go back.

"I want Fedya _now!_ " bellowed Lev, the sound bouncing horribly off the tile of the u-bahn station, making a dozen faces in the crowd whip to stare at them. _Fuck_ , they needed to get out of there.

Clearly thinking the same thing, Napoleon scooped Lev up again, grunting at the strain on his shoulder but saying nothing, and began jogging up the steps to street level just as Lev started howling. Gaby trotted after them, trying and failing to come up with any way to fix this, then simply trying to keep herself calm enough to not panic at how suddenly everything had spiralled out of control. Catching up to them, she tried to pet Lev's hair soothingly, only to receive a loud, pointed wail and be pushed away by one sweaty little hand.

"We need to go now," she hissed to Napoleon. "It's a twenty minute tram ride. He'll calm down by the time we get there."

"And if he doesn't?"

"Hopefully we won't be the only people there wrangling an unhappy kid."

Napoleon just nodded grimly, shifting Lev on his hip.

* * *

If Gaby had been uneasy entering East Berlin this morning, it was nothing compared to her tattered nerves a few hours later when she took Lev's hand, took a deep breath, sought out Napoleon's gaze for one last reassuring look, then walked up to the German side of Checkpoint Charlie. The only good thing was that Lev had indeed mostly settled down during their tram ride, now meekly looking around, shying behind her legs when the border guard stared at him.

"Passports," the guard grunted to Napoleon, who handed theirs over.

This would be the moment they lived or died. Gaby focused on keeping her breathing steady, bringing her heart rate down, turning to fuss with Lev's hair for a moment in a deliberate effort to seem unconcerned with the proceedings.

The guard examined their passports. Perhaps it normally took this long, Gaby didn't know, she'd never crossed legally, but his scrutiny felt unending. She could feel the eyes of the sniper in the East German watchtower looking down on them as the guard told them to turn over Napoleon's briefcase and Gaby's purse.

"Mama," Lev whispered, tugging at her skirt.

"What, honey?" she asked absently.

" _Mama_." He tugged more insistently, stretching his arms out to be picked up when she looked down at him. She hoisted him onto her hip, and he immediately wrapped his arms around the back of her neck, burrowing against her shoulder, obviously uneasy. The border guard began questioning Napoleon about what they had done on their visit. Gaby stroked Lev's hair.

"I need to see your son's face again," the guard told her after he'd finished with Napoleon.

Gaby nodded, trying to set Lev down, but he just clung tighter to her. "Liam, you need to look at the man so we can get back to the hotel," she told him.

Reluctantly, Lev turned in her arms, staring at the guard over his shoulder while his passport was scrutinized yet again.

"He looks different in this photo," said the guard.

Gaby nearly let out a nervous, incredulous laugh. Of all the problems they could have had, the guard had picked up on the only real thing about their documents, the photos. "He was younger then," she pointed out. "Do you have kids? Their faces change so fast."

The guard just gave a non-committal noise, eyes flicking between Lev and his passport. His mouth twisted. But then he glanced, ever so briefly, at his watch, and Gaby knew they might just have a chance. It was almost time for a shift change. They'd arrived at this time on purpose.

Without another word, the guard waved them through. She thanked him and, with Napoleon at her side and Illya's son in her arms, walked out of the city she'd grown up in for what she hoped would be the final time.

* * *

The work wasn't done once they crossed back into the American sector. Just because they were in friendlier territory didn't mean there weren't hostile agents running here. So they spent another hour dodging trails and 'losing' the bugs left in their bags until finally they jumped off their last tram a few blocks from their West Berlin safehouse.

Lev stared up at the three flights of stairs they needed to climb up to the flat then stuck his arms out to Napoleon with a whine. But this time Gaby scooped in, hoisting him against her hip once more, even though he was nearly too big to be held like this.

"Gabs..."

"It's fine," she insisted, beginning to climb. Her back was throbbing by the time they reached the top but she just leaned heavily against the wall while Napoleon unlocked the door, then staggered over to the couch to set Lev down. And then, instead of simply collapsing next to him like she desperately wanted to, she had to help Napoleon search the safehouse for any other bugs, carefully combing each room before at long last she could flop onto the couch next to Lev, who hadn't moved.

"We did it," she told him.

"I miss Fedya," he replied sadly.

"I know. I'm sorry. Once your papa gets here we'll take you to a toy store. Do you need anything right now?"

"Hungry," he mumbled, slumping against her arm.

Gaby sighed. She _just_ sat down. But she forced herself to rise, knowing from their bug search that the kitchen was empty, which meant she'd have to go out for food, risk being seen again when everything in her was screaming to stay put, stay safe. She stretched her back briefly then went to locate Napoleon, finding him in one of the flat's bedrooms, sprawled out on the bed. He hadn't even bothered to take his shoes off.

"Lev's hungry, there's no food here." She sat at the foot of the bed, absently unlacing Napoleon's shoes. "I'm going to go back out, there's a grocer on the next block."

Napoleon began to sit up. "I can go."

She stilled him with a hand on his leg. "I'll do this if you put him to bed. Deal?"

Napoleon didn't look happy about that idea. She thought back to hours earlier, when she'd been delayed by the police officers, remembering the sheer relief on Napoleon's face when he'd caught sight of her again.

"We can't all go," she reasoned.

"I know." He sighed. Closed his eyes for a moment. Then called out, "Hey, Lev? C'mere and lie down with me for a bit, okay?"

There was a thump, a burst of little footsteps, then Lev crawled onto the bed next to Napoleon, flopping on his back, arms and legs thrown out like a starfish. Napoleon let out a soft huff of laughter.

"I'll be thirty minutes," she told him. "Don't fall asleep."

* * *

Walking back from a so far uneventful trip for groceries, Gaby paused to consider the other half of the plan, the one she had no control over. Illya was supposed to be coming across in a few hours, on pretense of work, having left a tape playing sounds of Lev's voice in the flat where the boy had allegedly been staying with Illya's cousin, a ruse which could only work for so long. If things were going as discussed, he'd be getting ready to set off in about a couple of hours, across the border by dawn.

Until he arrived all she could do was worry. That wouldn't help anything. She tried to redirect her anxieties to what few things she could do: get Lev fed and keep him safe.

* * *

Later, when Lev had eaten and passed out on a makeshift mattress of couch cushions on the floor of Napoleon's room, Gaby climbed out of the shower, got into her pyjamas and went to check on them.

"Hey," Napoleon greeted her when she peeked around the door, lying flat on his stomach on the bed.

"How's everyone in here?" she murmured, settling on the edge of the bed.

"Kid wanted me to read him every damn magazine in the flat. Asleep now, though." He turned his head to look at Lev. "He did good today, didn't he?"

Gaby craned her neck to look over him, catching a glimpse of Lev sprawled out under his blanket, dark hair tousled and curling over his forehead, deep asleep, remembering the long hours he’d spent dutifully trudging alongside her and Napoleon with little complaint. "Yeah, he did." She shifted back and winced a bit as her tired muscles throbbed.

"Your back?"

She hummed at the same time she stretched, not that it did much good. When subjected to such overuse her back just tended to seize up, intractable to any of her interventions, just sore enough to make sleep difficult. One of the muscles along her spine had been spasming on and off for the past thirty minutes, not painful, just irritating little jumps that refused to go quiet.

"C'mere," Napoleon offered, sitting up, gesturing for her to sit between his spread legs. She crawled over then curled herself around her tented knees, releasing a quiet noise of relief as he began to gently run his hands along the sides of her spine. "Where's it hurt?"

With her coaching he began digging into the worst knots of tension, diligent, focused only on alleviating her aches. As he worked she relaxed further and further until she ended up slumped back against his chest, feeling his ribs rise and fall beneath her, his arms coming to curl around her middle now that he couldn't access her back.

"Is your shoulder sore?" she asked.

"Not really anymore. Suppose all those years ago I got off pretty lucky for being stabbed."

She pivoted to look back at him. "That's what happened?"

"If it makes you feel any better the guy missed anything important."

Snorting, she shook her head. "God, we live strange lives." Then she pushed away from him with a groan. "Can't sit like this all night."

Following her lead, Napoleon lay down next to her, pulling the covers up over the two of them then closing his eyes as he released a tired sigh, giving Gaby the opportunity to run her gaze along his features unobserved. For all the time they'd spent talking she'd so rarely been able to see him, a few days a year if they were lucky. There was a touch of grey on his temples now, not something she'd noticed before now, lying close enough to pick out the individual hairs. Had it really been that long since she'd met him? Without thinking she traced the faint silver with her thumb.

"I know," he said, not opening his eyes. "I'm yesterday's model now."

She simply hummed in response. Between this and a day's worth of stubble on his jaw, he looked rather rugged and it was doing all kinds of wonderful things for her. Things she couldn't act on now, not with Lev right there.

"I should go to bed," she told him. There was another room in the flat and they hadn't had a conversation about sleeping arrangements. She sat up to get another look at Lev, unable to shake the illogical worry that he'd simply vanish when she wasn't looking. He was still there, and Gaby watched as his eyelids began to flutter with a dream, feeling her mouth tug up in a smile despite her fatigue and fear.

"He's a great kid, isn't he?" whispered Napoleon, following her gaze. Something in his voice made her think back to years ago, when Illya had pressed Lev's baby picture into her hand while speaking with lovestruck awe about his son. Napoleon's tone wasn't exactly the same, but it was damned close.

"He is."

"Stay here?" Napoleon patted the bed next to him.

"Help you keep an eye on him?"

"Sure. But I just want you to stay."

Gaby bit her lip, turning to find something open, raw, just the slightest bit terrified in his expression. In place of needless words she just shuffled closer, resting her elbows on his chest and gazing down at him. His hand settled on the small of her back, warm, solid.

"Illya will be here soon, right?" she found herself asking in a hoarse whisper.

There was no way Napoleon could answer this, they both knew it, but for this moment she needed him to pretend for her, praying that he could read her well enough to understand that the uncertainty of the truth was not what she sought.

He nodded, swallowing. "Yeah, soon." This time Gaby didn't even fight the urge to lean down and press her lips to his. There was no heat in the kiss; it wasn't lust, it was comfort, connection, feeling every worry rattling around her chest be eased back into its place as Napoleon gently cupped his hands around her cheeks and sighed against her. Even when they parted Gaby pressed her forehead to his, letting herself need him in the way she hadn't let herself need anyone in a lifetime. Napoleon stayed quiet, still, giving her this, his fingers absently weaving into her hair.

"He's gonna be fine," Napoleon assured her again, emphatic.

Gaby nodded fiercely, her nose bumping his. "And when he gets here we're going to kick his arse for making us worry."

Napoleon huffed. "Yeah. You and me ganging up on him? He doesn't stand a chance."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I probably should apologize for the cliffhanger here because it wasn't my original intention but this chapter was starting to get really long.
> 
> I will also apologize in advance as there may be a longer than anticipated delay in publishing the final chapter. I was making good progress on it, but I am dealing with an unexpected and now ongoing family emergency which has really upended things and limited my writing time. I'm trying to get bits of writing done when I can, but everything is very up in the air at this point so I can't predict how much I'll be able to do. I'm not abandoning this fic! It just isn't my top priority now, unfortunately. Thank you to everyone who's read and commented so far, I've been rereading your lovely words to give myself a very much needed pick-me-up :)


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